Catena in Canticum canticorum

Of Procopius of Gaza, Christian sophist, an epitome of selected commentaries on the Song of Songs, from the voice of Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril of Alexandria, and Origen and Philo of Carpasia, Apollinaris, Eusebius of Caesarea and various others, namely Didymus, Saint Isidore, Theodoret and Theophilus.

Chapter One.

{Of Gregory of Nyssa.} Through what is written here, the soul is in some way espoused to the immaterial and spiritual union with God; and it needs hearers clothed in white, with undefiled thoughts, so as to enter within the undefiled bridal chamber. For the title itself urges us to this. For just as the Holy of Holies is exalted by its holiness, so the present song excels both those of David and of Moses and of the other prophets; and in the manner of an epithalamium it sets forth the mingling of the human soul with the Divine; for these reasons Solomon, expressing through nuptial words both the ineffable desire owed to God (for the nuptial desire is greater than every longing) and the utmost impassibility; for he who is joined to God ought to be so pure that he makes the passionate impulses a basis for impassibility. And Solomon came forward teaching in such an order as this; for having set proverbs before the soul still young, he commands it to love wisdom; therefore he also says frequently, My son, and promises a necklace as to a youth and a crown; and toward the end he praises the courageous woman; then, for the one thus introduced in Ecclesiastes, he brings everything to nothing, calling things flux and vanity; so that he might wing the soul toward the things that remain;

And now he joins to himself, as truly and alone good, the soul that has been so purified by him, wishing it to run to God neither by fear of punishment nor by hope of rewards—for both are servile—but by the affection of love. 1. Song of Songs. {Of Nilus.} The book of Songs resembles a woman adorned with natural beauty and, by costly ornament, having added to her natural beauty, modest in character and in outward appearance, yet in what is hidden disposed in much the opposite way. For as in the case of such a woman the sight stirs pleasure in the licentious, but experience convicts her chastity as not consenting to the ready tent; so with the present book, the wording, shaped rather amorously, seems in some way to become a bait for the uneducated, while the meaning, uncovering the severity of the mysteries to those who approach, makes the difficulty of the thoughts unacceptable through the delight in the wording; and persuading them to be slaves to the solemnity of contemplation, from the seeming passionateness about the letter it skilfully leads to the mystic initiation of the doctrines signified. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. The bridegroom is a fountain of life, he who cries, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink"; and from his mouth the words of life rain down; to which the soul hastens to press its own mouth, according to the prophet, to draw in spirit; for this kiss is a cleansing from every stain. Therefore it seems to me that the Lord reproachfully brings this very thing against Simon the leper, saying, "You gave me no kiss"; for otherwise you would have been cleansed of the passion. {Of Origen.} And otherwise: not through prophets, etc.

Because your breasts are good beyond wine, and the fragrance of your ointments beyond all spices. {Gregory.} The childlike teaching of God is beyond the world's well-toned and most fervent wisdom; and from the local position of the breasts he indicates the heart and the hidden and ineffable power of the Godhead, through which God nurses the strength and life of each one, granting food suited to each of those who receive it. {Philo.} That is, the breasts are the covenants, beyond the earthly word. {Apollinaris.} Since in Scripture there are many wines, both better and worse, now the bridegroom's breasts are set beside the better ones; for they would not have been compared with the worse. The Bride, then, having been gladdened by many and various wines and having obtained preparation to receive the bridegroom's breasts, which are better than these, says this, preferring them to the wine that is in the law and the prophets; and the matter of the ointments is the same as that of the wine. But observe that in the case of the gospel way of life he said "fragrance," while in the case of the legal worship he set down the spices themselves, indicating the surpassing spiritual quality of the former and the coarseness of the latter. Your name is ointment poured out. {Origen and Procopius.} Perhaps prophesying the power of the name of Christ that filled the world at his coming (so that, according to Paul, "to some a fragrance from death to death, to others from life to life"), the bride would have said, Therefore all have loved you; but not only the maidens, who are renewed day by day and have no wrinkle or stain; but it was poured out, so as no longer to be passed over in silence, having been shut up in secrets.

{Cyril.} He also makes clear the name of the Only-begotten that was invoked upon all the nations, in that all the nations send forth a sweet fragrance toward him, bearing his own appellation. {Gregory.} The myrrh of the divine nature itself—that is, the comprehension of the essence—is beyond every name and thought; but from those things by which he wondrously works, giving matter to the divine names, it signifies a certain small richness of the divine myrrh; through which we name him wise, powerful, good, holy, blessed, and Judge and Savior and the like. {Nil.} Just as myrrh that is kept enclosed becomes evident when it is poured out through its fragrance, so your name, O Bridegroom, while you were still in the Father's bosom, was unknown; but after the emptying, poured out like myrrh, it has its testimony from that very fact, being confirmed by the power of the signs. But the maidens loved you for this reason, because they drew you out from the Father's bosom, needing your presence, after the benefit of your visitation, after the experience of the wonders, having come to know your name, and to follow after you after the perception of your beneficence. But I, who was already betrothed to you at your coming, received the scent of your myrrh even before your visitation; and I, having come beforehand to the knowledge of your good breasts by grace, which were later known to many. And the maidens can also be said to be those drawing the Bridegroom after them—both the woman with the hemorrhage and the Canaanite woman; for both drew the myrrh from sympathy. {Apollinarius.} For by the name of Christ all things are cleansed, healed, baptized, and are made to dwell in the true fragrance for us.

The Holy Spirit says this also, and the name that was poured out accomplishes the outpouring of the Spirit upon all, according to the saying, "You were sanctified and justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God." What the name does, then, is reasonably a myrrh poured out. For this reason the maidens loved you; they drew you; behind you we will run at the fragrance of your myrrh. {Gregory.} For who is so devoid of desire for such beauty, if only he has an eye able to gaze upon its season? They drew him, then, to love him in return; for Wisdom says, "I love those who love me." {Cyril.} Paul too was a youth; "I can do all things," he says, "in Christ who strengthens me," and therefore he loved exceedingly, saying, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And how did they draw him? By following in his footsteps and enjoying the myrrh of the Gospels. And if we run, the word of the maidens holds, "we will walk behind the Lord our God." The king brought me into his chamber. {Gregory.} The women are still

Becoming like infants, they run to the fragrance; but the perfected bride is led into the innermost chambers, as Paul was, and into the kingdom of heaven. {Of Origen.} That is, he calls the beloved one impossible, etc. {Of Cyril.} This kingdom he here calls a storeroom. {Of Nilus.} He calls the storeroom the Lord's body, into which the blessed soul has entered, having dwelt together with God the Word and reigned together with him; into which it was natural for those from the Synagogue to suffer, who saw her as it were prancing, and with a haughty bearing saying the words, "The king brought me into his storeroom," to the maidens; having prudently understood this in her mind, and having guessed the jealousy stirred up in them by the narrative: if the hostile and black one boasts that she has been deemed worthy of the king's storerooms that belong to those women, which they would have said, despising and mocking her, this she does not shrink from acknowledging with good sense; while adding the reason, that it was reasonably spoken by the Bridegroom. We will exult and be glad in you. {Of Procopius.} The maidens say to the bride: Share your knowledge; just as the one who reclined on the breast of Christ, and was loved by him, shared the knowledge of God with us. {Of Gregory.} Through this saying the Word unveils the economy of the Church; for those first made disciples by grace, and who became eyewitnesses of the Word, would not have confined the good to themselves, but through transmission they made the same grace available to those after them.

For this reason the maidens say to the bride that she was first filled with good things through the Word's speaking with his mouth, and was deemed worthy of the hidden mysteries: "For we will exult and be glad in you; for your exultation is our common joy." "We will love your breasts more than wine; uprightness has loved you." {Of Procopius.} As you, they say, love the bridegroom's breasts more than wine, so we love yours in imitation of you, through which you give milk to drink to the infants in Christ. {Of Apollinaris.} For this reason we love the flow of your words beyond human measure; because uprightness, Jesus, has loved you; through whom the crooked is made straight; such is the disciple whom Jesus loved. {Of Origen.} That is, even if now through weakness, etc. 4. I am black and beautiful, daughters of Jerusalem; like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. {Of Nilus.} Even if I now seem to you to be black, bearing certain marks of my former condition, know that as on a stage, under the Ethiopian skin, an ineffable beauty is hidden, which will shine forth in the bridal bath. {Of Origen.} For in the pool of baptism, when he is about to wash me, then I will come up radiant, having washed away the dark quality that had come upon me; so that you also, seeing it then, will be astonished and say: Who is this who comes up having been made white? Why then do you boast, daughters of Jerusalem, in your kinship with the fathers, having denied that kinship by your deeds, and having thrust away the justification that comes from faith?

But the phrase "like the tents of Kedar and like curtains" signifies the extremes of the two qualities in which she has been—virtue and vice—having exchanged the blackness of idolatry and become beautiful like the curtains of Solomon; or else he calls the tents of Kedar those from the Gentiles, and the curtains of Solomon those who came together from the Jews and were added to the faith. {Of Theodoret.} There is a Church from the Gentiles, black indeed as having been deceived and reduced to ashes by the judgment of the irrational, but beautiful as awaiting you, the Master who will come from heaven for my salvation; and it has made clear at once both the gloom of impiety and the beauty given to her by divine grace. {Of Origen.} And the Church from the Gentiles says, etc. {Of Gregory.} Do not marvel, he says, that she loved me straightway; but that even when she was black he made her radiant, because of the repentance for the things in which I was blackened; and you therefore, even if darkness formerly dwelt in you (for this is Kedar), become curtains of Solomon, of Christ the peaceful king, and of the light

A dwelling place; for by a part he called the royal tent. 5. Do not look at me because I am blackened, because the sun has looked away from me. {Of Gregory.} Do not attribute the cause of the dark appearance to the Creator, but to each person's own choice, and he says: Do not think that I was created black, but that the evil sun made me such; concerning which [it is written], "The sun shall not burn you by day." {Of Origen.} Or that, having been darkened by sin, Christ looked past me because of unbelief—he whom the Scriptures proclaim the Sun of righteousness. The sons of my mother fought against me; they set me as a keeper in the vineyards; I did not keep my own vineyard. {Of Gregory.} He called the sons of my mother the intelligible enemies; for they are rational alike, and all from one cause, the divine nature; these, he says, casting me out of the good vineyard, that is, out of paradise, set me to keep their vineyards, in which the cluster of bitterness and the grape of gall and the wrath of dragons are cultivated; and he said "in vineyards" because of the manifold variety of evil. And remembering the ancient fall, she dismisses the maidens and again makes her speech to the bridegroom. {Of Origen.} Or rather the disciples who teach Christ, etc. {Of Cyril.} And perhaps she accuses herself, that she did not keep her own vineyard, having allowed everyone who passed by on the road to ravage it; and it was [possible] for him to lay it waste from the thicket, and for a wild beast to graze it down.

Perhaps he also glorifies God, because having been unable to guard her own vineyard—since she neither cultivated it nor guarded it—she advanced so far as to be able to guard many vineyards. {Of Apollinarius.} These things could also be applied to those who first persecuted the Church and later taught those who had been persecuted by them, such as Paul was; for Symmachus gave it in the singular, saying: The son of my mother fought against me, he set me as a keeper in the vineyards—that is, after persecuting, he set me to guard the commandments of God. {Of Cyril.} Or he calls the sons of her mother—that is, of the synagogue—the scribes and Pharisees, who made war against those who believe in Christ, commanding them to observe the worship according to the law; for this is the vineyard. But I, she says, did not guard it; for the things that were gain to me, these I have counted loss for the sake of Christ, as the blessed Paul says. 9. Tell me, you whom my soul has loved, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; lest I become like one wrapped around among the flocks of your companions. {Of Gregory.} Your name, she says, I do not know, but I call you from love; for I reasonably love the one who loved me and laid down his soul for me; and I wish, having found your pasture, to be filled with the eternal delight, which one who has not eaten cannot enter into life; where you will give me rest, in the unshadowed light of the resurrection. But teach me how these things may be obtained, lest I go astray and fall into the flocks of your sheep that belong to others; for she is anxious about guarding to the end the beauty she has acquired, and she inquires about this.

But the bridegroom, kindling a greater desire, postpones the answer; and the friends of the bridegroom answer and speak what follows, setting forth the manner of the security of the good things present by way of counsel; and the word from them is veiled. {Of Cyril.} He calls his companions apostles; for he said: "No longer do I call you servants, but friends." For you are friends. And she, being clothed about, speaks as one veiled, since Paul says: "That until this present day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies upon their heart." The voice, then, of the synagogue repenting toward Christ: Make yourself known to me, so that I, while your companions shepherd the Churches, may not remain with the veil upon my heart. 7. If you do not know yourself, O fair one among women, go out in the footsteps of the flocks, and shepherd your kids beside the tents of the shepherds. {Of Gregory.} This is a safeguard, to know oneself; but he who has followed the wandering tracks of those who went before will escape notice into

Changing a kid for a sheep. The friends of the bridegroom, then, say: Since the soul, having become beautiful out of black, if you intend to keep the beauty, do not follow after those who have gone astray, lest you be added to the herd of kids, to that which has taken its place on the left; but there is a clearer reading that also preserves the construction: If you do not know yourself, O beautiful among women, go out from the heels of the flock, and you will shepherd kids; instead of the tents of flocks; so that "go out" stands for "you will go out." {Of Philo.} Another says the word as from the bridegroom to her who alone is beautiful in all the synagogues, that Know where you were and where you now are, and from whom you have your beauty; but if you make yourself unworthy of my glory, shepherd the souls of sinners in the tents of the kings of Israel. 1560 {Of Cyril.} That is, if you do not repent, he says, you will be found after the nations; inasmuch as you have no fruits of righteousness, remaining unfruitful, and after the flocks which I set up for myself. {Of Apollinaris.} But according to the version of Symmachus, it has this meaning: If you have not yet recognized the stamp of my flock, and according to my laws you will shepherd your own people, having gone out, follow the flocks. For thus you will know that my sheep do not walk according to the Jewish flock; for thus, being shepherded and shepherding your own young flocks, which he called kids, you will know where Christ pastures, and who are those pastured under him, having the spiritual and most beautiful stamp, according to which the excellent Church is beautiful among women.

Of Origen. The much-repeated maxim among the Greeks has been taken up beforehand and handed down to the wise Solomon, namely, "Know yourself," etc. 8. To my horse in the chariots of Pharaoh I have likened you, my neighbor. Of Gregory. A horse of God, set in array against the chariots of Pharaoh—some angelic and invisible power that sinks the Egyptian; to which is compared the soul purified by the bath, overwhelming in the waters every Egyptian thought and all alien wickedness. So then, he says, you who once were among the chariots of Pharaoh, I have now likened to my horse. Of Cyril. That is, having received my faith, O Church, you have been made like the apostles; concerning whom is the saying, "You shall mount upon your horses, and your riding is salvation"; who also were equipped against the chariots of the spiritual Pharaoh. 9. How beautiful are your cheeks as a turtledove? Of Gregory. Since, being an unbridled horse, he has adorned her with the chastity of the turtledove; for I called her a horse, he says, not as one needing a muzzle and bridle; for your pure life shines forth. Of Cyril. That is, he sets forth the modesty toward the bridegroom through the turtledove; for the cheeks of the turtledove are ruddy; but to the synagogue the opposite: "You had the look of a harlot, you became shameless before all." Of Origen. But Paul also calls the Church a bride, and members of Christ, etc. Your neck as ornaments. Of Gregory. He praises the neck that is curved in the shape of a circle; which indeed we see happening around the proud necks of colts; for the mention of necklaces indicates the circle, whose shape, displayed on the neck, makes the colt more comely.

A "hormos" is properly said of coastal places, in which the shore and the interior, hollowed out uniformly, receives the sea in its bay, and gives rest through itself to those sailing in from the open sea. By metaphor, through the shape, the ornament worn around the neck is called a "hormos." And as the colt, bending its neck into the shape of a circle and looking toward its own footfalls, by which it makes its course without stumbling and safe, neither striking against a stone nor stepping into a pit—this is no small thing for the praise of a soul, to look toward itself and to press on to the divine course with all safety. But if it had been likened to only one ornament, the praise would be altogether incomplete, as not having the same testimony also in the case of the remaining virtues. But now the likeness to the multitude of ornaments gathers up the whole testimony of the virtues in the word. Of Didymus.

For the ornaments are pure faith, undefiled chastity, a pure life; that is, the very thing is an adornment, but not wearing an adornment. Of Cyril. He calls the neck the submissive part of the soul; for how is it a beautiful adornment, a neck that has practiced bearing the yoke of Christ? 10, 11. We will make for you likenesses of gold with studs of silver, until the king is at his reclining. Of Origen. But this—the silver was not much nor poured out, etc. Of Gregory. But this is worth not passing by unconsidered: why ever is not the gold itself taken for adornment, but the likenesses of the gold?

And not the silver itself, but the marks formed from this material by the likeness of silver; what is therefore signified by this is such as this, that the divine nature is above every comprehending intellect. And the thought of it that arises in us is a likeness of what is sought; for it does not show that form itself, which neither anyone knows nor is able to see, but through a mirror and through a riddle it sketches some reflection of what is sought, coming to souls from some resemblance; and every word that signifies such thoughts has the power of a certain indivisible point, unable to reveal what the mind intends; so that every mind is lower than the comprehension of the truth, and every interpretive word seems a brief point, unable to extend itself to the breadth of the thought. The soul, therefore, led by such words toward the understanding of things that cannot be grasped, he says must, through faith alone, bring within itself the nature that surpasses all mind; and this is what is said by the friends: We will make for you, O soul, who have been well likened to the horse, certain images and likenesses of the truth; for such is also the power of the silver of words, that the words seem to be sparkling gleams, unable to reveal with precision the thought contained in them. But you, having received these things, will become both a beast of burden and a dwelling-place through faith, since he who is to be reclined in you will be so through his dwelling in you; for you will be both a throne and a house for the same one.

These things the friends of the bridegroom have bestowed on the pure and virgin soul, and these would be the ministering spirits sent for service for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation. {Of Philo.} And the likenesses of gold are the martyrs, as gold tested in fire, bearing in their body the marks of Christ, and also in a time of peace, not only in persecutions, because they have chosen to be present at the regeneration. {Of Cyril.} That is, silver in Scripture is customarily the divine teaching, and gold the divine gifts; and all things before the coming of Christ were likenesses and shadows of the good things to come, according to the Apostle; but Christ, having risen, has bestowed perfect things on men; and before the resurrection we had likenesses, from the praises of him, both the law and the prophets. Nard gave forth its fragrance. {Of Procopius.} He says that a sweet odor gathered from various virtues as from flowers is for the bride; for in herself she smells the sweet odor of Christ; and if he called his passion that, on account of which the alabaster jar of myrrh, poured out, spread its fragrance everywhere. {Of Origen.} For he says the fragrance of the bridegroom, etc. {Of Gregory.} For just as you, he says, the ministering spirits, bestow not the unmingled gold of divinity itself, but likenesses of the gold through the concepts that are comprehensible to us, not revealing the things concerning him with a far-shining word, but through the brevity of the marks of rational silver providing certain intimations of what is sought, so I also, through the inspiration of my myrrh, received the sweet odor of that very one into my perception.

Such, it seems to me, is the meaning: Just as from different aromatics, each fragrant according to its own particular quality, a certain skilled and measured blending produces such a myrrh—one fragrant plant being included among the ingredients, whose name is nard, the name being contained in the whole preparation; so too, if someone gathers every flower of fragrance from the varied meadows of virtue and makes his whole life a single myrrh through the sweet savor of his individual pursuits, he would become perfect through all things. But to gaze directly upon God the Word himself, as upon the circle of the sun, he has no natural capacity, because of the transcendence of his essence; yet in himself, as in a mirror, he sees the sun. For the rays of true and divine virtue, shining forth upon a purified life through the impassibility that flows from them, make the invisible visible to us and the inaccessible accessible, painting the sun in our mirror. Or else it hints at the passion of Christ, on account of which the alabaster jar of myrrh was poured out and spread its fragrance. 12. My beloved is to me a bundle of myrrh; he shall lodge between my breasts. {Of Gregory.} Through these words he reveals a greater and more perfect wisdom, which it belongs only to those already perfected to achieve. For since it is the custom of women who love adornment not only to devise for themselves what is pleasing to those they live with by outward ornaments, but also to endeavor, by some sweet fragrance, to make their bodies appear more pleasant to their own husbands, they hide within the covering of their clothing the aromatic suited and effective for such a need.

As it gives off its own proper fragrance, the body too is tinged with the sweetness of the aroma—the bundle of my neck, and the body made fragrant upon the breast. He himself is the Lord, not another aromatic; for having become stacte, he lies enclosed in the bundle of my conscience, now lodging in my very heart, as it were in the deep and innermost place where the good is treasured up, and he kindles the members of the body, since not even a single act of lawlessness cools the love according to God. And he has become stacte, as one that drops upon the fleece, and as drops dropping upon the earth. He says also in the Psalms, "Myrrh and stacte and cassia from your garments." Perhaps, then, the stacte and myrrh are a symbol of the Master's death, which the bride carries about as a bundle on her own heart. {Of Origen.} Having spoken of the bridegroom's nard, etc. {Of Cyril.} By nard and the bundle of stacte is signified the burial of Christ, which Nicodemus brought and with which he wrapped his body. And the bride bears breasts—the two covenants—between which Christ lodges. 13. My beloved is to me a cluster of Cyprus grape, in the vineyards of Engaddi. {Of Gregory.} Who is so blessed as, seeing his own fruit in the very cluster of his own soul, to see the master of the vineyard? For behold how greatly she has grown—she who recognized the sweetness in the bridegroom's own nard, who made him fragrant stacte, and who received the aroma in the bond of her heart, so that the good might remain with her forever unexhaled—she becomes the mother of the divine cluster, of him who through the passion is fragrant as henna, that is, who blooms, and in the passion pours forth the wine.

For the wine that gladdens our heart becomes and is named the blood of the grape after the economy of the passion. Since, then, the enjoyment in the cluster is twofold—one from the flower, when it gladdens the senses with its fragrance, and the other through the fruit already perfected, when it is at hand to enjoy as food, or to be made cheerful with wine at banquets—here the bride still bears fruit as the flowering cluster. They call the vine-blossom Cyprus; for the child born to us, Jesus, in those who receive him, advancing in different ways in wisdom and stature and grace, is not the same in all, but according to the measure in which he comes to be; insofar as the one who has room for him has capacity, such does he appear—either as an infant, or advancing, or being perfected—according to the nature of the cluster, which is not always seen on the vine with the same appearance, but changes its appearance with the time—flowering, blossoming, being perfected, ripening, becoming wine. Thus, then, the cluster of Cyprus is a cluster promising wine, not yet wine, but becoming so through the flower. The

But hope is the flower, giving assurance of the grace that is to come; for it gladdens the sense of smell instead of taste, by the expectation of good things, sweetening the soul's senses with the vapors of hope. And the addition of "of Gaddi" signifies the rich place, in which the vine, having taken root, produces nourishing and sweet fruit; for thus also those who have recorded the places say that the lot of Gaddi is suited to the rich nourishment of clusters. Since, then, he who has his will in agreement with the law of the Lord, and makes this his meditation through every night and day, becomes an ever-green tree, fattened by the inflows of the waters; for this reason also the vine of the bridegroom, having taken root in Gaddi, the rich place, watered deeply in understanding through the divine teachings and growing, has blossomed forth this fair-flowering and fragrant cluster, made like to the form of the bridegroom. For if he is the vine, and we the branches, clearly we bear fruit in that very vine. {Of Nilus.} He calls the cluster of Cyprus either the flowering grape, or the cluster from Cyprus, perhaps because his homeland has some exceptional quality in the fruitfulness of its clusters; whichever of these the bride says, it accords with the thought that follows; for she calls her own beloved a flowering grape, saying this: that while he is among what seem to be circumstances, he is a fragrant cluster; except for those who through hope await his perfection. But to me, even while he is in the flower, he provides enjoyment not indeed from eating, but at least from the fragrance, and shows forth the gladness of the resurrection.

Rolling the fruit unseen beneath the flower, and for the time being soothing by the fragrance of the flower; for it is in the vineyards in Gaddi, which is interpreted, the eye of a place of ambush; for the Lord also, hanging on the cross as in a place of ambush before the eyes of all, furnishing great perplexity to those who see; but the perfect soul was not scandalized, having perfect love toward him, and being persuaded from the prophecies that these things had to happen; for many, he says, or even all, were troubled by what had happened, but none of these things moved me, nor prepared me to doubt. But if also according to the other reading, it is a cluster of Cyprus, one must consider how, being a cluster of Cyprus, he is said to be not in the vineyards of Cyprus but in Gaddi. Perhaps, then, when he was in the bosom of the Father, before the incarnation, he was a cluster of Cyprus, being God the Word; but when he came to the world through the flesh, he came to be in the vineyards of Gaddi; in which the eyes of the place of ambush, not having an exact comprehension of the truth, made what appeared hard to discern, the mind moving in equipoise toward both sides, both toward the divine worthiness because of the greatness of the wonders, and toward the human lowliness because of the sufferings. After such exactness, then, both in deeds and in the doctrines themselves, the bridegroom requiting her, or rather testifying to what belongs to her, says, Behold, you are beautiful, and the rest. 14. Behold, you are beautiful, my neighbor, behold, you are beautiful, your eyes are doves. {Of Gregory.} In the preceding words, he testified to the beauty of a certain horse in what appeared;

But now, as of a virgin, he accepts the beauty that has been revealed, and says: Behold, you are beautiful, my neighbor. By these words the Logos teaches that this is the repetition of beauty—to come near to the fountain of the beautiful. For formerly, he says, you were not beautiful, because, being estranged from the archetypal beauty and brought near by the evil proximity of wickedness, you were changed into ugliness. But now, having departed from fellowship with evil and drawn near to me, the archetypal beauty, you yourself have become beautiful, having been formed like a mirror into my own impress. Then, pausing and beholding her beauty as it were in some addition and increase, he again repeats the same word, saying: Behold, you are beautiful. But in the former instance he called her "neighbor"; here, however, her who is known from the name of her forms; for he says, Your eyes are doves. For formerly, when she was likened to a horse, the praise was in the cheek and the neck.

But now, when her own beauty has been revealed, the grace of the eyes is praised; and the praise of the eyes is that the eyes are a dove's. Since whatever one gazes upon, one receives its likeness within oneself. For those who are learned in such natural philosophy say that the eye, receiving the impressions of images which flow from visible things, thus accomplishes sight. Or else the bride, no longer looking upon blood and flesh—that is, the bodily life—but released from bodily affection, is reasonably said to have the form of a dove in her eyes; that is, having caused the impress of the spiritual life to shine forth in the discerning part of the soul.

And since her pure eye has become receptive of the mark of the dove—that is, of the Holy Spirit—for this reason she has room also to behold the beauty of the bridegroom; for "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit." {Of Nilus.} Twice he says "beautiful"; therefore he praises the purity in both the men themselves, the inner and the outer. And her eyes he fittingly calls "of a dove," since all things, by the difference of the economies concerning him, change their judgment along with them—forming different opinions about him before the passion and different ones in the passion—and by heterodox imaginations, in opposition, they shook the strength of her purpose; but she understood spiritually the things being accomplished, judging nothing by the opinion of the many in the events that happened, and keeping the glory concerning him as God from the beginning in both seasons. And he calls her "near" because of the incarnation, since he took up her body; and he calls her also "sister" because of the purity of the union, and "bride" because of the incorruption; for always being a bride, she has her desire flourishing and fresh, loving and being loved. {Of Cyril.} He calls her beautiful, not as before saying it only among women, but now the bridegroom redoubles the praise of the bride as his near one, praising both her contemplative and her practical part; and "eyes" he means those directed to the mind and the heart; "of a dove," the far-seeing, in that it is also taken in reference to the Spirit. He says, then, that the bride received a mind that sees God alone; and the eyes are also the guileless and keen-sighted teachers of the Church. 15, 10.

Behold, you are beautiful, my brother, and indeed lovely; our bed is shaded; our beams are cedars; our paneled ceilings are cypresses. {Of Philo.} That is, beautiful in the law, lovely in the prophets, lovely in the apostles, beautiful in the good things of the present age, lovely in those of the age to come. And our couch is shaded—but you shelter us even in death. "For though I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will not fear evils, because you are with me." And the bride, taking pride in the house built for her by the bridegroom, says these things, calling the holy prophets beams; for the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree, and like a cedar in Lebanon shall he be multiplied. For the paneled ceilings are the fitting together of boards, suited for the carving of craftsmen. {Of Gregory.} For all things, she says, that were formerly reckoned beautiful to me—such as glory or beauty or power or anything of that sort—I have turned away from, and my judgment of the beautiful no longer wanders, so as to think anything beautiful besides you; for you are the true beautiful—not only beautiful, but the very essence of the beautiful, extending your beauty along with the eternity of life, whose name became loving-kindness; as one who rose up for us from Judah. For the people from the Jews is a brother to the one from the Gentiles who comes to you; rightly, because of the manifestation of your divinity that came to be in the flesh, you were named the brother of the one who longs for you. Then she added: Our couch is shaded—that is, I have known you, or human nature will know you who have become shaded in the economy of salvation. For you came, she says, the beautiful brother, lovely, having become shaded at our couch—lovely, but insofar as we are able to receive it.

For your rest in relation to humanity has overshadowed the divinity with the flesh; since who could have endured the manifestation? And he calls it a bed, as a bride, interpreting by the figurative meaning the mingling with the Divine and the communion of human substance; and this could not have come about otherwise, unless the Lord had appeared to us through the shadowed things; who is not only a bridegroom but also a builder: crafting the house for us himself, and becoming the material of the craft. For he lays a roof upon the house, adorning the work through incorruptible material; and such is the cedar and the cypress. For cedars, because they are long, span the roof across the width of the house; and cypresses, through the paneling that is made, beautify the inner construction of the house. For since in the Gospel the Lord calls the varied assaults of temptations a rain, in the case of the one who built the house well upon the rock—that the rain descended, and the winds blew, and the rivers came, and the buildings remained unaffected in these things—there is need for us of such beams, which are the virtues that do not admit the influxes of temptations, being solid and unyielding, and preserving unshared participation in evil amid temptations; lest at some time, softened by the fall of sufferings, we become hollow, and receive the influx of such waters flowing in from outside upon the heart within our storehouses, through which our stored treasures are corrupted.

Through the beams and the paneling the account hints at that well-ordered and carved fitting-together of planks, variegating the beauty of the ceiling; and at the good fragrance that naturally attends the cypress, which is also immune to rot and suited to every kind of carpentry craftsmanship; [hinting] that the virtues are to be successfully achieved in the soul not only in a state of purity, but that one should not be careless of the seemliness that appears outwardly; for one must take thought for what is noble before God and humans; and to be manifest to God, but to persuade humans and have a good testimony from those outside; and to shine with luminous works before humans, and to walk seemly toward those outside. These are the panelings wrought through the fragrance of Christ, of which the cypress is a riddle, crafted in the seemliness of life. {Of Nilus.} Again she speaks with forbearance, or rather struck with amazement, at hearing "beautiful" from the bridegroom; for she thought that such an appellation belonged to him alone, and to no mortal. She immediately turns the testimony back upon him: "Behold, you are beautiful, my beloved," she says, "and indeed comely" — instead of "exceedingly"; for thus it seemed good to some to divide it. And after this, "Our bed is shady," meaning the common body in which both rested, both God the Word and the blessed soul; the bridegroom sparing her from having it in the open, lest again, from the assault of the opposing sun, she suffer something of the old blackness. According to the other division, it will be understood thus:

As if the bride were saying, "O bridegroom, you alone would justly be called fair and handsome, having beauty not acquired but natural; and when you have come to be at our bed, you are handsome and overshadowed, working the things proper to the divinity—the divine and pure form of the Godhead—as though under a curtain by the flesh; therefore you became discernible through the body's covering that paradoxically conceals the things being accomplished." {Of Origen.} Now the bride seems to have previously seen more clearly the beauty of the bridegroom, etc. CHAPTER 2, 1. "I am the flower of the field, a lily of the valleys." {Of Cyril.} As the bride, having received the rain from above and having brought forth virtue, compares herself to a flower of the field; and she shows how much the coming of Christ benefited, seeing that even the valleys, which were unsuitable for every seed, he showed to be full of such flowers; for he calls "valley" that which was hollowed out by the demons who formerly dwelt in it. {Of Philo.} The bride says these things having heard from Isaiah, "Let the wilderness rejoice, and let it blossom as a lily;" and from the Lord, "Consider the lilies of the field;" and the Lord would be saying that he has come to be on earth so that the faithful might blossom also in Hades; for this

A lily of the valleys, which is a dead man. {Of Gregory.} The bride recounts these things about herself, saying: I, after the bridegroom had come to be in our bed, overshadowed in the body—he who built me, the house, in himself, and roofed it with the cedars of the virtues—have become, she says, a flower both fragrant and pure and bright, from the human nature in the breadth of the plain, excellent in color and in fragrance, surpassing the other flowers, which is called a lily, flashing forth the gleam of chastity. This plain, in comparison with the heavenly vault, is called valleys; in which the well-cultivated soul is sent up from the hollow toward the height, as is also the nature of the lily; so that in a lofty place its beauty might remain pure for it, not defiled by mingling with the earth, nor choked by the thorns of life, the evil powers; which he hinted at, in what is passed over in silence, as the daughters of the devil. {Of Nilus.} She calls herself a lily, he says, either because she is conspicuous among those called valleys through the humility of deeds or of thoughts, brightly adorned and shining in both; or because she is going to judge such souls in the age to come by comparison with her own achievements, having nothing more in her nature than they—as the Ninevites, and the queen of the South will condemn the unbelieving generation. And she is said to be a flower of the plain, perhaps meaning the valleys, both because of its lowliness and because it is uncultivated, and because the nations that came from the depth of impiety to knowledge are named in the plural; but the plain is Israel's, because it is made level for the suitability of cultivation by the prophetic and legal instructions.

And well is it said that these things are not a fruit but a flower; for not yet does the plough of the cross cut open the earth—the plough which the Lord laid upon the apostles as upon oxen, sending them out yoked together for the farming—nor had it yet been watered with the Master's blood; therefore it was unfruitful and barren. {Of Origen.} He calls a flower that which is on its way to becoming fruit, etc. 2. As a lily among thorns, so is my neighbor in the midst of the daughters. {Of Gregory.} How great is the progress of the ascent to the height that we see taking place in the soul. The first ascent is to be likened to the horse that casts down the opposing power. The second ascent is to come near, and to make her eyes those of a dove. The third ascent, then, is no longer to be near, but to be named a sister of the Master. "Whoever," he says, "does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and my sister, and my mother." Since, then, she has become a flower, harmed by none of the thorn-bearing temptations in respect of becoming a lily, and having forgotten her people and her father's house, she has looked toward the true Father; therefore she is also named a sister of the Son, having been transformed to this kinship by the spirit of adoption, and having been released from fellowship with the daughters of the falsely named father, she again becomes higher than herself, and sees the mystery through the eyes of the dove—I mean, by the spirit of prophecy. This is the voice of the Bridegroom, bearing witness to the Bride beyond what she bore witness to herself.

For since she called herself a lily, and the other souls valleys—either from humility or from ignorance, not measuring the whole comparison by the truth—he himself, who better knows the particular qualities of the states that come to be, made the comparison. And he likens her to a lily because she in no way takes up the care that comes from bodily concerns, but fulfills the body's need without anxiety by whatever comes to hand, having chosen a life free from toil and self-supplied because of her care for the kingdom of heaven, as is shown in the Gospels. But he likens the others to thorns because they have placed all their care upon the things of life; and they are no longer thorns in their cares, but she has made them such by the great zeal of her own care for these things. As an apple among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. {Of Gregory.} What then is it that she has seen?

Holy Scripture customarily calls the wooded life of men a wood—the life that has grown wild with the various forms of passions, in which the destructive beasts lurk and ravage men, whose nature, remaining inactive in light and sun, has its strength through darkness. For this reason the apple grows in the wood: insofar as it is a tree, being of the same nature as the rest—"for he was tempted in all things by likeness, apart from sin"—but insofar as it sweetens the senses of the soul by its fruit, it has a greater difference from the wood; or as much as the lily has compared to the thorns, which alone is fragrant and delights by its appearance; but the apple is sweet to smell, and also to taste and sight.

Well then did the bride see her own difference in relation to the Master: that he becomes grace for us even of our eyes, becoming light, and ointment in the sense of smell, and life for those who eat. But human nature, perfected through virtue, becomes a flower, all but nourishing the farmer, but adorning itself; yet not producing food for the provider. For "you have no need of my good things," says the God-fathered one. So the soul being perfected is a lily, as we said, adorning itself only, as we said; but the Lord has become as an apple in the forest, because he grafted human nature toward the beautiful and fragrant and edible. For we are in need of his things; therefore the Bride says, "His fruit is sweet in my throat"; and the fruit is the teaching, concerning which David says, "How sweet to my throat are your words, beyond honey to my mouth!" And he says "of the sons," not of certain friends of the Bridegroom, but of darkness, who are also named children of wrath by the fellowship of their works. {Of Nilus.} He shows the superiority; for the Bride called all human beings trees of the forest as unfruitful; but she called her own Bridegroom an apple as fruitful. For since he had already anticipated her with praises and likened her to a lily, as among thorns among the other women, she in turn repays him by addressing him as an apple in the midst of trees of the forest, because he is a fruitful plant, but the trees of the forest are unfruitful; and by the water from which they are watered, clearly demonstrating the difference between them. For concerning these things the Ecclesiast...

I made pools of water," she says, "to water from them the forest of shoots and the trees." And concerning this David says: "And he shall be like a tree planted by the channels of waters." But it is not the same to be watered, flowed over by ever-flowing waters, and to be irrigated by waters gathered by human devices into a pool; for the one signifies the heavenly word, the other human teaching. Then, just as the apple, preserving the fragrance enclosed within its skin, also diffuses it outward, so too the divinity was hidden in the body; nevertheless it diffused its activity, even upon the flesh visible outwardly. And the shade in which the Bride desired to sit, since shade naturally comes about mostly from leaves, blocking the sun's ray by the close union of the petals. Therefore, whatever the Lordly man did by nature of humanity, eating and drinking, and whatever were works of nature—since he did these too with some benefit, not measuring his desire's insatiability, but knowing the sufficiency of need; for the fruit of the apple are the actions according to virtue, which also became sweet in her throat, gladdening the soul's perception by the good quality of the taste. And this saying has, besides this ethical contemplation, also a doctrinal one. For if the law has a shadow of the good things to come, and there are certain of the things to come; and the body is Christ's, from whom the shadow also subsists, in the shadow of the law, and as the Bride sat—not doing the law itself bodily, but the things signified by it—

being idle from the typical commandments—for sitting signifies idleness—but enjoying the fruit richly and feasting on it, both by smell and by taste, and by delight and enjoyment; since taste is the organ of nourishment, smell of delight.

{Of Origen.} It was fitting for the Bride, etc. {Of Philo.} That is, he says, of the sons of the Jews, according to "I have begotten sons," whom he called unfruitful and trees of the thicket; in the midst of whom Christ was according to the flesh, as one who partook of blood and flesh, bearing the apple as an image in himself, the red and the white, and indeed fragrant. {Of Apollinaris.} Then truly the senses of my soul are sweetened, when the shadow of the apple fences us off against the flame of temptations, so as not to be scorched by such a sun; and it is not possible otherwise to be refreshed under the shadow of the tree of life, unless desire leads the soul up to this. 4. Bring me into the house of wine. {Of Origen.} These things toward, etc. {Of Gregory.} Or how does the soul, rightly likened to the horse, run the good and divine course? For stretching forward to the things before, it is not satisfied with the mixing-bowl of wisdom, but longs to be at the very winepress of the mystical wine, and to tend that vine which produces such a cluster. {Of Nilus.} With good reason the Bride now demands to be brought into the house of wine. For since she alone, in her reasoning, first believed beforehand the use of the wine that would later be shown, when the cluster hung upon the cross and was despised by all because it was still fragrant, not revealing the use of the wine to all, having established beforehand such goodwill in her reasoning—

so as to see the wine before its time in the grape that blossoms with henna, and to attest the divinity in him who is on high upon the cross, and to hold firmly, as already spoken, the proclamation of the grape on the cross that is about to be pressed out; and having suffered that before the outcome of events which many suffered after the outcome—this, the exceptional prize of such judgment, she asks for entrance into the house of wine. And if the wine is the Word, the house of wine would be the Father; for in him the Word is found. And after being well in such a house, she wishes that love be appointed upon her, she who has already become worthy of love through such insistence—so that love be appointed upon her, no longer as by chance loving her, but as being among those appointed and defined who are henceforth loved out of obligation, to count and to have. {Of Apollinarius.} And wine is spoken of for gladness of heart according to the psalmist; and wine giving a sweet savor according to Zechariah. And to the bride who came in it was fitting: Bring me into the house of wine; for she was not previously inside the vineyard. For after those called at the third and sixth and ninth hours, she is called at the eleventh; having heard, "Why have you stood here all the day idle?" Go into the vineyard. For she was idle, because she was not working her own things, guarding others' vineyards. And she first receives the honor that comes from love, the royal stamp, the spiritual gift; therefore Aquila also says, He appointed love upon me; for it is love's to say, "I wish to give to this last as also to you." Appoint love upon me.

Having come within the object of her longing, she leaps forth again to something greater, and says: Since I have come to be in the house of wine, set me in order under love, which is God—or, appoint love over me; for the meaning signified by either expression is the same, whichever way you handle the turn of the phrase, whether from being placed under love or from love being placed over her. Or perhaps we are also taught what sort of love ought to be rendered to God, and how we ought to be disposed toward others, lest the fulfillment of love become in any way disorderly and perverted. For we are to love God with all our soul and heart and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves; but a wife, if one has one, more purely than one's own soul, as Christ loved the Church; but one who is more subject to passion, as one's own body; and an enemy, by not returning evil for evil, but repaying injustice with beneficence. She says, then, "Make love ordered"—lest I fall away again, preserving the inclination toward the better. And the teaching of how one ought to love God, and how one ought to love one's neighbor—or perhaps this too is what is to be surmised through the saying.

Since I was loved before the first transgression, I was reckoned among the enemies; but now I have returned again to the same grace, having been joined to the Master through love. Confirm for me what has been appointed through grace and is unchangeable—you, the friends of the Bridegroom—preserving for me, by care and attention, my abiding in the better state, firmly established. 5. Sustain me with myrrh. {Gregory.} That is, with the virtues; and it is a virtue not only to see the good and to come into participation in the better, but also to preserve unchangeably what is good. Therefore, the one who wishes to be sustained in myrrh seeks that stability in the virtues be added to her; for the myrrh is virtue, because it is separated from every foul odor of sins; for sin is foul-smelling. Therefore, Sustain me with myrrh, heap me up with apples, because I am wounded with love. {Nilus.} Perhaps she demands, either as a recompense for her accomplishments, to be in these things, or, as one wounded by longing, consolation, as one might say, and refreshment of soul. For since she was, as it were, being dissolved by the remembrance of the beloved, she desires to be sustained in the myrrh of contemplation, and to be heaped up with the apples of the Bridegroom's wonders and the fruit of actions; since contemplation, delighting by the elegance of its thoughts, is a fragrance of myrrh; while action, along with nourishment, also has a sweet savor. For the works of virtue also produce joy, gladdening the conscience of the one who works by the hope of recompenses. But some have said the words, Heap me up with apples, concerning death; as the Bride desiring to be deemed worthy of burial with the saints.

Understanding those men entirely as apples who said, "We are the fragrance of Christ." Set me in order among apples. {Of Cyril.} Secure me with the evangelical words, for these give off to us the fragrance of Christ. And may I, he says, be ranked also with his saints; for just as he himself is an apple, so those who are of one body and partakers with him are apples. {Of Procopius.} By the advantages according to God. {Of Gregory.} So that always looking upward, I may look to the examples of good things displayed in the Bridegroom; for there is gentleness, there is freedom from anger, there is forgetfulness of wrongs toward enemies, and love of humanity toward those who grieve us; there is self-control and long-suffering, and the like; which, being gathered together in order, produce a most gracious sight, leading back to the height of conduct. And Christ is an apple, because of the whiteness of his flesh and the redness of his blood, and the fragrance of his preaching. {Of Origen.} Symmachus rendered it thus, etc. That I am wounded with love. {Of Gregory.} Having said these things, she praises the archer for his good aim, as one who rightly directs the arrow at her; for she says, I am wounded with love; by her words she shows the arrow fixed deep in her heart; and the archer of the arrow is love; and we have learned from the Scripture that love is God, who sends forth his chosen arrow, the only-begotten Son, upon those being saved, by the Spirit of life, tingeing the threefold point of the barb; and the barb is faith; so that wherever it may come, it may bring in with the arrow the archer also, as the Lord says:

I and the Father will come, and we will make our dwelling with him." The soul, then, lifted up through the divine ascents, sees within herself the sweet dart of love with which she was wounded; and she makes this very wound her boast, saying: "For I am wounded with love." Nay more, she herself becomes a dart in the hands of the archer—his left hand directing her head toward the mark above, while his right hand receives the dart to himself. Therefore she says: "His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me." {Of Cyril.} The left hand is the Law, the right hand the Gospel; or else the left hand is the present life, the right hand the life to come, which will embrace me when he says to those on his right: "Come, you blessed of my Father." And elsewhere he says that length of days and years of life are in the right hand of Wisdom, but in her left, wealth and glory. The right hand of Wisdom, then, is the knowledge of divine things, from which comes eternal life; her left hand is the knowledge of human things, from which come wealth and glory. She says, therefore,

Because my mind transcends human things, and divine knowledge will cover me. For it is said again: Honor her, so that she may embrace you. He shows, then, that the same one is both Bridegroom and archer, and the purified soul is both bride and arrow; as an arrow, then, he directs her toward the good target; as a bride he receives her into communion with incorruptible eternity, granting length of life and years of life through his right hand; and through his left, the wealth of eternal goods and the glory of God, of which those who seek the glory of the world become partakers. Therefore he says: His left hand is upon my head, by which the arrow is directed toward the target. But his right hand, taking me to himself and drawing me up, makes me light for the upward course; and there, being sent and not separated from the archer, rather to rest. Then he turns his discourse to the daughters of the Jerusalem above; and the discourse is an exhortation brought forward in an oath, that love may ever abound and increase, until the one who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth makes his will effective. Through the left hand he hints at the things of the present life, fair as it seems, whose enjoyment she already has; through the right, the expectation of things to come in promises; whose use, as has been said, he says lies in promises and hopes. And it is well said that with the right hand she is embraced, and with the left her head rests.

For the things of the present life, even if they are considered very good and admirable, must be subordinated to the head of the perfect soul, providing only the necessary use to the body, like the pillow to the head; but the things of the age to come, since being divine they stand above human nature, he hinted at their superiority through the embrace. And perhaps, since the hands are a symbol of actions, the actions of the left hand signify the things of the body, and those of the right hand the things of the soul; being on the right, they have obtained the better lot, they are encompassed by bodily necessities. For just as the embracing hand is both above and within and holds the embraced in its arms, so the actions appointed toward the goal of the future life, clasping every irrational movement of the body, keep life orderly and bound together; no one being able to plot against the soul embraced by the Bridegroom. 7. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and by the strengths of the field: if you stir up and awaken love until it pleases. {Of Philo.} He adjures the souls of the saints by the divine signs that Christ showed in his life, to awaken through intercessions his longing toward her. But Aquila and Symmachus say, and the fifth edition: I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles, or by the deer of the country, they render; and perhaps the clear-sighted are gazelles, from gazing and seeing; but the noble contenders against evil, who harmlessly destroy its offspring, are deer, since the animal is also destructive of snakes, being not harmed by their venom.

by which it suffices to awaken love until the voice of the Bridegroom deigns to speak to them. {Of Gregory.} The soul that has run back up to the height, guiding the souls that are being discipled toward the perfect advance through the oath, leads them by the hand to the life that is according to virtue, saying: that if the souls being discipled make progress in the virtues until you awaken and awaken love—which is of a soul being lifted up and ever increased by addition toward the greater—and his good will comes to its end, so that one living in the flesh should no longer live according to the flesh, and dwelling in the field of the world should look to the angelic powers, imitating through impassibility the angelic purity; for the powers of the field, that is, of the world, are angelic powers, assuring us of an angelic condition in the regeneration; but strength and power, if it is said in the singular, the thought of such a voice is sent up to the Divine; but if in the plural, it sets forth the angelic nature.

But the phrase I adjure stands for I adjure; and an oath is a word that guarantees the truth by itself; and it is called an oath whether one swears or is put under oath. {Of Nilus.} The phrase to awaken has been spoken clearly to the daughters of Jerusalem; but which love it is—the love in them, or the love in the Bridegroom, or the love in her who is speaking—is unclear. If, then, she wishes the love in those women to be awakened, she may be saying something like this: O you slow and insensible to what is advantageous, how great a gain you overlook through inexperience! This is what comes to those who love the Bridegroom from their loving: I adjure you by the powers of the field, those that govern the things of the world, and by their strength with which they overthrow the adversaries, to awaken the love for the Bridegroom that sleeps within us, and to rouse it up, and to know my pleasure by coming to experience it; and she exhorts them with a view to their gain and reckoning their benefit. But if she wishes the Bridegroom's love to be awakened, she says this: I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, to go to the one beloved by me and to report my passion to him—that, loving him, I cannot stay at home, since my longing drives me out and compels me to traverse every road, in case I should perhaps meet the beloved; for she would perhaps doubt whether she is truly loved; and already she appears both meeting him and hearing a word from the Bridegroom declaring his love; for the Bridegroom often withdraws, awakening her desire the more and fanning into flame what is fading of her longing.

But in some of the copies it reads, Do not stir up, nor awaken, if it means her love toward the Bridegroom himself, because I have no need of a mediator; for I know that, having become worthy of him, I stir up his will toward my love; for heavenly love is not procured by pandering; but he himself visits the beauty of the soul, drawn by it, and is fully assured by the works of the virtues, and not persuaded by rumors of what happens; but if it means, do not stir up their love toward him; for we still have need of a time to serve him in fear, not yet having a settled state of those who love, lest you stir up love prematurely and set him against you, since she has not yet learned to use love well. 8. The voice of my kinsman: behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, bounding upon the hills. {Of Gregory.} The purified soul, lifted up through so many ascents by love toward the participation of good things, does not yet seem to have grasped what it seeks; for all those ascents it names not as a vision and comprehension of the truth, but as the voice of the beloved, characterized through hearing by its distinguishing marks, not known and made glad through understanding; a voice, it says, not a form, not a face, not a stamp revealing the nature of what is sought; but a voice, producing rather a conjecture than an assurance about who the speaker is; and this the varied nature of the vision also sets forth.

For behold, he says, this one has come, not standing still nor waiting, so as to be recognized by the one who gazes intently through his remaining; but snatching himself away from the eyes, by leaping and springing, and being likened now to a gazelle, now to a young stag. Perhaps, then, he foresees the economy of the Word of God through the flesh, which was proclaimed from afar but later revealed; for the divine voice is attested by the works, and the outcome is joined to the word of the promise, just as David says: "As we have heard, so also we have seen." The voice of my beloved, that is, of whom we have heard, Behold, this one has come; him, then, we have received with our eyes. So the voice of the Bridegroom has come to be through the prophets in whom God spoke; and after the voice the Word came, leaping upon the opposing mountains and bounding down from the hills, that is, trampling down and destroying the evil exaltations of the wickedness of the demons. {Of Nilus.} Since the one who was loved was God, not being confirmed by bodily proofs, but attending to disposition and entering into thoughts, he immediately appears, consoling the

...the desire of her who loves; so that she, perceiving the peculiarity of the voice, said out of her great joy: The voice of my kinsman, behold, this one has come. For having seen John, who was the voice, she also beholds the Word, and says by way of pointing: Behold, this one has come; for the voice signifies the presence of the Word; and turning her hearing to sight, she shows what was heard. And the leaping upon the mountains, springing over the hills, is of this sort: I heard his voice from afar; but now I see that very one leaping upon the mountains and springing over the hills, which was fulfilled in the incarnation of Christ. For the goings-forth of the prophecies concerning him were leapings and springs; and the mountains and hills are the prophets who spoke concerning him; leaping over them, and springing from one to another, he made the prophecy of each one akin to the other, making the various prophecies one body, and joining together by the springs of the meanings the mountains of the words that seemed to stand apart. And mountains might be called those prophets who speak the things of his divinity; and hills those who speak the things of the economy. For the hills, even if they rise above the rest of the earth, nevertheless have something earthy; but the mountains are pure stone, having no share in earthy substance. {Of Origen.} Some have assigned this to the preceding, etc. {Of Cyril.} These things are for the clarity of what is dramatically introduced; up to: Thy voice is sweet, and thy face is beautiful.

And it is clear that the soul of the Word—that is, the Bride, the Church of Christ—perceives the voice before she understands it as divine; which is what we the faithful experience, being struck with wonder before we understand the voices of the Law and the Prophets as full of divine grace. Such is the meaning of "The voice of my kinsman" as appointed beforehand of the far-off manifestation of the Word. She, having seen him laying hold of great visions, while not even despising the lesser things, says: "Behold, he himself has come, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills." And throughout the whole of the Word, some things are said to the Bridegroom as present, and some as though sought by the Bride; since even among questions, sometimes we seek certain things, being at a loss for the solution, and sometimes we enjoy the solution, when the Bridegroom, the Word, illumines our hearts; then again we are at a loss in other matters, and again he appears to us; and this happens many times, until, being perfected, we attain the Bridegroom, not only coming to us but also making his dwelling with us. And the Church longs when she is left to temptations, and he appears to her with his graces; therefore she says: "Behold," she says, "this one has come, leaping upon the mountains." And he comes also to the nets spread out by the evil one near the Church; which, having torn, he teaches the Church to tread upon them contemptuously, by passing over every storm of temptation. The signs of the air are shown, and the nearness of summer, concerning which it is said in the Psalms: "Summer and spring." For flowers have appeared to her, and the complete purification has drawn near, called the time of cutting. 9. My kinsman is like a gazelle or a young stag among the mountains of Bethel.

Because of this he signifies the keenness of sight of the one who looks upon all things; but by the fawn of deer, because by its breath and the peculiarity of its skin it drives away the working of venomous creatures, which he named mountains and hills—both the lower and the higher; for this is what the distinction from hills to mountains hints at. For in like manner both the lion and the dragon are trampled down—the things that are exalted—and the serpent and the scorpion—the things that seem inferior. And he prepares the disciples for the nature of deer when he says, "Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions," so that by the height of virtue they become mountains of Bethel; which the meaning of the name shows to be the lofty and heavenly life; for the word signifies the house of God. Bethel is, and is interpreted, the house of God; and its mountains are those who because of the greatness of their virtue have been called mountains; for as mountains stand out above by height and differ by strength from the rest of the earth, so among men the saints excel, raised up by the loftiness of their conduct. To these

The Bride therefore sees her beloved lingering, likened, on the one hand, by reason of the contemplative power and his being discerning of human thoughts and conceptions, to a gazelle; and on the other hand, by reason of the practical power and his antipathy toward the opposing powers, to a fawn of deer; for the deer is destructive of venomous reptiles. But why did he say "fawn of deer" and not "deer"? Because most men, or nearly all, in their childhood age, even if not of shameful passions, were yet overcome by certain passions, late and scarcely taking up a mature and temperate reasoning; but the man of the Lord, before he knew how to call father or mother, was disobedient to wickedness, trampling youthful desires underfoot with mature judgment. Perhaps he was a gazelle when with keen sight he saw and spoke of the thoughts of men: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" And a fawn of deer when he said to the legion of demons: "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit," as from the crevices of human bodies lurking within, drawing up the swarming assemblies of demons. {Of Philo and Origen.} Or he calls the prophets mountains, complete in understanding, seers of true things, and I think also the apostles; since wisdom, according to generation, passes into souls; and mountains, because at the rising of the sun they are first illuminated; and hills, those who received the manifestation of the Spirit in lesser measure. You might also call mountains the thoughts in the Law, and hills those of the other prophets; or, having contemplated the Word in the New Testament, he sees the mountains leaping, and skipping upon the hills, the Word in the old letter.

The bridegroom is likened to a fawn of hinds, not only because he destroys the serpents, but also because a child was born to us, a son was given to us, and because he humbled himself; for otherwise he would have been a perfect hind. Behold, this one stands behind our wall, peering through the windows, looking out through the lattices. {Of Cyril.} Perhaps he also indicated the apostles through the fishing craft. The Church, then, hears these things from the Word, receiving the radiance of the truth through the prophetic windows and the legal lattices, while the typical wall of teaching still stands—I mean the law, which makes the shadow of the good things to come and does not show the image of the things themselves; standing behind it, the truth, holding its place, shines forth afterward. {Of Gregory.} According to the literal sense, the lover converses through the windows with the bride as she keeps house within; and since the wall separates both in the middle, the fellowship of the word becomes unhindered—the head peering through the windows, and through the lattices in the windows looking out toward what is inside the eye. And by way of a gradual sequence of guidance, the Word brings human nature near to God: first illuminating it through the prophets as through windows, and through the weaving of the legal precepts as through lattices. For thus we understand: the prophets are the windows, who bring the light in; and the lattices are the weaving of the legal precepts; through both of these the radiance of the true light steals into what is within. And after these things comes the perfect illumination of the light.

when he himself, the true light, appears through his mingling with our nature. {Of Nilus.} He calls the wall the body of the Lord's man, God the Word hiding his incarnation; and she sees him also peering through the windows, the words of the prophets; and stooping through the nets of the apostolic preaching; for the prophetic words show him partially, as it were peering from a window; but the apostolic teaching shows him wholly and clearly. This alone, then, has been able, from the things prophesied concerning him and from the signs foretold, to pass through the thickness of the wall with the eye of the soul and to see what is hidden in the body. And again the wall is the law, behind which the Bridegroom stands hidden, having given the law and not being known to those who are legislated for; but the Bride sees him standing behind the law, unseen by the many, because in it the things concerning him are spoken both clearly and in shadow; as the rock indicated Christ, and the sea the baptism. And again one may call the windows the senses of the Bride; possessing which she beholds the sun through them, and received life, while sinners receive death through them, according to the text: "Death has come up through your windows." And the nets are the temptations brought upon him in the wilderness by Satan, when he thought to encompass him with temptations as with nets; over which the Lord appeared superior;

And having shattered the snares and the nets, and having cut them off by his straight-flying concealments, he slipped out through the nets, revealing the power of his divinity to the discerning soul; whence thereafter the Bride relates to the daughters of Jerusalem what the Bridegroom said in their presence, but no one except her heard what followed. And the windows would be the senses, through which death passes in the case of sinners; but in the case of the soul lovingly disposed toward the Word, the Word peeks through the senses of one who has used them as she ought, and who has in her upper room a net of devices, reaching which the Bridegroom looks out through them, calling the Bride to himself, to the invisible and incorporeal things beyond the senses; this is perhaps what the following text also indicates: Arise, come. 13. My beloved answers and says to me: Arise, come, my neighbor, my fair one, my dove; for behold, the winter has passed, the rain has gone, it has gone its way; the flowers have appeared in the land; the time of pruning has come; the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land; the fig tree has put forth its early figs; the vines are budding, they have given forth fragrance. {Of Gregory.} The human race lost its natural mobility, frozen by the frost of idolatry; but upon this harsh winter the Sun of righteousness rose again, to warm what had been petrified by the cold, and that, warmed again by the ray of the Word, it might become water leaping up to eternal life; therefore the Bridegroom, the Word who sets upright those who are broken down, cries out through the light-bringing windows—that is, through the prophetic words—to the Church.

Arise, that is, from the fall, you who were entangled and fell to the earth through the serpent; and it is not enough for you merely to be set upright, but also go forward through the progress of good things, running the course in virtue. And she, as soon as she receives the power of the Word, rises and stands before the light; and she draws near and becomes beautiful, and is named a dove; and toward what she looks, toward that she is also shaped; and becoming wholly spiritual—for having approached the light, she becomes light; and by the light the beautiful form of the dove is imaged forth—I mean that dove whose form made known the presence of the Holy Spirit. Having thus addressed her, then, and named her, the Word—beautiful because of the nearness, and a dove because of the beauty—proceeds to what follows; no longer saying that the despondency of winter holds the souls. For behold, he says, the winter has passed, the rain has gone away and departed by itself. And he makes evil many-named, according to the differences of its workings; and it is called winter because of the manifold signification of evils—for in it everything imitates the despondency of death: plants drying up, and living creatures ceasing from song and from activity; and the sea also grows wild. And by the phrase "it departed," he indicates the rain as somehow animate and endowed with choice. Through these things, then, he shows how the human nature in paradise flourished at the beginning; but when the winter of disobedience dried up the root of immortality, from which, adorning nature, it had budded with fruits, the flower was shaken off and dissolved into earth; and man was stripped of the beauty of incorruption.

And the grass of the virtues was dried up by the love toward God; whence come the manifold passions, which have been brought to a head in us by the opposing powers; through which the evil shipwrecks of the soul occur; but when he came who wrought in us the spring of our souls, and rebuked the winds and the sea, all things became full of calm; and again nature comes to bloom afresh and to be adorned with its own flowers, that is, with the virtues; which now indeed flower, but in their own season will yield the fruit. It is necessary, then, in this manifold winter, to enter in and pluck from these flowers, and to fashion crowns for ourselves; for the time of their cutting has come. The voice of the turtle-dove testifies this to you; that is, the voice of one crying in the wilderness; for John is the turtle-dove, the forerunner of the radiant spring, who points out the flower from the root of Jesse, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and teaches repentance from evils and the conduct that accords with virtue. For, it says, the voice of the turtle-dove was heard in our land; perhaps naming as "land" those condemned in wickedness, whom the Gospel calls fornicators and tax collectors, among whom the word of John was heard, while the rest did not receive the preaching. But as for what was said about the fig tree, that it brought forth its unripe figs, let us understand it in this way: the fig tree is preeminently drawing out the moisture in its depth by heat.

When much moisture has gathered in the inner parts, of necessity the flow, through the digestion of the fluids taking place in the plant, sets aside the useless and earthy part of the moisture from the unserviceable elements; it does this often, until the pure and nourishing part, in due season, puts forth what has been cleansed of the useless quality. That which, before the sweet and nourishing and perfect fruit, is put forth by the fig tree in the form of fruit is called the early fig, which is a prelude of the fruit, not itself the fruit. He, then, who has seen these things also awaits the fruit as now near. Since, therefore, the Word describes the spiritual spring to the Bride, and this season is a boundary between the wintry gloom and the participation in the fruits in summer, for this reason he clearly announces as good news that the evils have passed away, but he does not yet fully display the fruits of virtue; rather he stores these up for the due season, when the summer has come, which is the consummation of the age. But now he shows the hopes flourishing through the virtues, whose fruit appears in its own season. Since, therefore, human nature, in the case of the fig tree mentioned here, has gathered much evil moisture through the winter that has been understood by us, and as one who has wrought the spiritual spring, first it casts out of its nature all that is earthy and useless, setting aside its falls instead of unserviceable elements through confession, and then in this way, imposing on its life a certain impress of the hoped-for blessedness through a more refined manner of living, as by certain early figs, it announces beforehand the coming sweetness of the figs.

Understand the vine that is putting forth its fragrant blossom in this way too: its wine, which gladdens the heart, will one day fill the bowl of wisdom and be set before the feasters for their enjoyment; but for now the vine is fragrant through its blossom. These things the Word prefigures to the Bride—the marks of the fair spring of souls—and he hastens her toward the enjoyment of what lies before her, rousing her by his word and saying: {Of the Nile.} The phrase "Arise" belongs to one who calls and rouses; for from the lowly commandments of the law he calls her, rousing her to the higher teachings of the gospel traditions. Leave behind, he says, the childish law, which hinders the working of sins, and come to the grace that cuts off even the base thought. Arise from earthly things, advance to heavenly things; arise from types, journey to the truth; rise up from the elementary law, reach out to perfection. He calls the season of passion "winter," in which all were storm-tossed by the spirit of unbelief; for there was also a perceptible winter at that time. When it had passed, the prophetic rain and the word of the law ceased; for of the voice

When the turtledove was heard saying, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest," there was no longer any need of the legal word's utterance descending like rain; and when the flowers appeared in the land—the holy men within Christianity—the time of the cutting had arrived, of the casting off of the Jews; and the fig tree, which the householder ordered to be cut down because it bore no fruit, put forth its shoots of repentance after the coming of Christ, having received the dung of private instruction; and the vine too, transplanted from the true vine, gave forth fragrance from its pruning, those who say of Christ: We are a sweet fragrance to God among those being saved and among those perishing; for even those who disbelieve the Gospel marveled at the word of the proclamation and were struck by the power of the signs. {Of Cyril.} Or he called it the time of the cutting of the spiritual harvest, about which the Savior says, "The harvest is plentiful." {Of Origen.} "Arise," he says, etc. {Otherwise.} And he calls it the turtledove of the secret and unknown wisdom; for the creature is fond of solitude, whose voice is heard by those still clothed in an earthly body; the time of cutting is the time of the setting aside of superfluous things, and this is the time of his own coming, in which the bodily things of the law and the histories in the prophets, which have grown around the spiritual things, must be cut away and the better things remain; and again it is the time of the cutting off and remission of sins through the washing of regeneration; and do not wonder if the Bridegroom speaks of the turtledove as of another, for this is the custom of Scripture in many places. 14.

Rise up, come, my neighbor, my beautiful one, my dove; and come, you my dove, in the shelter of the rock, close by the outer wall; show me your face, and let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is beautiful. {Of Cyril.} The rock is Christ; for he himself becomes a wall for us who believe, and a shelter, and every safety is signified by the outer wall; having come there, he says, you will obtain every assistance. {Of Apollinaris.} Or else the wall is the inner man, and the outer wall is the outer man, which Aquila rendered as "in secret places"; in which Christ also commands that prayers be performed. {Of Gregory.} Of such a resurrection, and of such a course, there is no end; for one must always rise up, and never cease drawing near to God. As often, then, as he says, "Rise up and come," so often does he give the power of resurrection toward what is better; so that from being beautiful she becomes beautiful, and according to the Apostle the same image is transformed from glory to glory; thus, then, though she was a dove in her former achievements, he commands her to become a dove again none the less through transformation toward what is better; for he says, "Come to yourself, my dove," that is, no longer look with eagerness upon the things that draw you away, but have your own desire as a guide toward what is better; for "come," he says, "to yourself," strengthening in your own reasonings the eagerness for the good; not with necessity leading the way; for virtue is without a master and voluntary, and free from all necessity.

And if you, O soul, have been stripped bare by the law, if you have beheld with your mind the rays that come through the prophetic windows, no longer remain under the shadow of the legal wall; but come to the rock, which is the Gospel. Depart from this; for the rock is close to the outer wall, since the law has become an outer wall for the evangelical faith, and the doctrines are close to one another, neighboring according to their power; except that the rock is spiritual, while the wall is earthy, with which the bodily and earthly has been compacted; but the evangelical rock does not have the mud of fleshly thoughts; and according to the apostle Paul, the law is spiritual; for the one who thus receives the law spiritually comes under the shelter of the evangelical rock, which is close to the bodily outer wall. When the Word had cried these things through the windows, the dove, illuminated by the ray of the thoughts, answers, and having understood the rock

to be Christ, she says: Show me your face; no longer speaking through the old riddles; but as I am able to see, show yourself to me openly, so that I may come within you, the evangelical rock, having left behind the outer wall of the law; for if the voice through the windows is so lovely, how much more the one face to face? {Of Nilus.} In the passages before these, having raised her up, since he did not indicate the place where he commanded her to come, now again he calls her and makes the place clear; for since she had asked the Bridegroom, Where do you shepherd, where do you rest, and he did not answer then, now he makes known to her the place of the pasture; so that what she said may come to pass, as one wrapped in garments among the flocks of companions.

Saying, "Come to the shelter of the rock that signifies Christ, on which the serpent cannot set a footprint of evil, so that, sheltered under this rock's shelter, she may receive in her intellect no trace of wickedness from the opposing powers." And he calls her to the things adjoining the outer wall, wishing there to hear through her sweet voice and to behold her beautiful face. A sweet voice is, in the ethical sense, reverent words that bestow grace on those who hear; in the doctrinal sense, it is the voice of the robber who cried out on the cross: "Remember me, Lord, when you come in your kingdom." Hence he says to the Church, "Your voice is sweet," crying out through the firstfruits of the robber, "Remember me"; but to the Synagogue that says, "Crucify," which he also hates, he says through the prophet: "Late did she wail aloud her voice: 'And she gave her voice against me, therefore I hated her.'" A beautiful face is one that is calm from a peaceful condition. "Show me," then, he says, "your face, and let me hear your voice," adorned in character and word for my pleasing, and displaying a beauty of deeds and a diligence of doctrines in harmony. But if someone calls the law a wall, he will call the natural law an outer wall, adjoining which is the rock; for the natural law, being nearer than the written law, happens to be of Christ, in which the saints, having lived as citizens, pleased God, knowing the just by natural impulses, and themselves becoming their own teachers of what is fitting. And Paul also says, "The law entered in besides," having interposed the ancient and the final way of life, which are one.

{Of Origen.} He means the soul, etc. 15. Catch for us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards; and our vineyards are in bloom. {Of Gregory.} When the Bride had spoken the things written before, and her prayer to the Bridegroom had prospered, he, being about to make himself manifest, first urges on the hunters—whether certain angelic powers or also apostles—to the hunt of the foxes, which are apostate powers, so named because of their guile; they are already small in the power of the grace of Christ, yet they are destroyers of the vineyards; so that the vineyard, that is, human nature, is no longer hindered by them from blooming and bearing clusters—that is, from the conduct of a life of virtue. For when this has happened, the two pass over into each other: for God comes to be in the soul, and again the soul is transplanted into God. She saw herself, then, in the power of him who commanded, cleansed from the pestilence of these beasts—the Bride who, like a vine, keeps straight—and at once she gives herself to the husbandman who has loosed the middle wall of the fence; for she is no longer walled off by the wall of the law from union with the beloved, but she says: She now sets before the nurslings of the Church those who still display the flower of virtue and can easily be wronged by the passions; for the vine is not so harmed when it has grown to maturity as when it is plotted against in its beginnings.

For just as a grape in bloom, if it is shaken, lets fall its berries while the weak ones remain hanging on the husks, so virtue, shaken prematurely by the passions, does not come to the full flower of perfection, since the pursuits that ought to have ripened have slipped away before a stable and settled condition; for vainglory is by nature wont to mar the flower of the virtues, and boastfulness becomes a hindrance to progress for those who are beginning the worship of God, shaking off their improvements by conceit and showing the fruit withered even in its flower. The Word therefore counsels us to catch the little foxes while they are still small—that is, to master the passions while they are still tender and weak, before habit becomes a disposition hard to change in evil. Either, then, this is what is meant according to the division stated, or, reading it as dividing, "that destroy the little vineyards"—that is, to master and catch the foxes while the vineyards are still small; for foxes cannot destroy great vineyards, those that have come into a settled state of the good; for it is characteristic of the small to be caused to stumble. And as if intensifying the perplexity born of fear, she says: and our vineyards are in bloom; for she seems to fear not only that the vineyards are delicate and newly planted, being small, but also that they are easily caught for blossoming by the foxes that shake off the flower. The Scripture knows such a shaking off; concerning which it says, "So are the sons of those who have been shaken off," whom Paul calls branches broken off from the olive; and David, grass on the housetops; and the Lord, a branch cast outside the vine, hinting at their fruitlessness and rejection.

Origen. The Bridegroom says these things to the friends, etc. 10, 17. My beloved is mine, and I am his, who shepherds among the lilies, until the day breathes and the shadows are moved. Gregory. For I saw him, she says, face to face, him who always is, but for my sake rose in a human way from my sister the Synagogue; and in him I rest and become a dwelling-place for him; who does not make grass the pasture of the flocks, but feeds the sheep with pure lilies, that is, with divine oracles; so that those fattened in soul by this pure and sweet-smelling food, having put away from themselves every shadowy fantasy of the things pursued in this life—which the word called shadows—may look through by the rays of the Spirit of God to the true substance of things, having become sons of light and of day. These things the soul speaks, which the Word shepherds, not among thorns or grasses, but in the fragrance of the lilies of a pure conduct, and it urges the Word to bring the hope of good things swiftly into action. Nilus. She dedicates herself to the Bridegroom alone, and she says the Bridegroom is again hers alone, because of the intimacy that comes from her right actions. For since she gave her body not to fornication but to the Lord, for this reason the Lord also, having become man, has become hers in her body; and she says that he shepherds among the lilies, signifying that the untroubled souls are shepherded by him, since those distracted by bodily business are outside his shepherding.

He shepherds among the lilies, not forever, but until the coming day breathes and the shadows of present things are moved. But Symmachus, having rendered it "he who shepherds the flowers," showed that it is not in a place of lilies, but the lilies themselves that he shepherds—the carefree souls, and those that take no thought for earthly things, just as it has been explained. And we said above that "flowers" are spoken of as the saints who have blossomed in Christianity; and here, then, he shepherds these flowers. And the phrase "that the shadows be moved" signifies the removal of the works of the law, which are often called shadows by Paul. Origen. The Bride says to the companions of the Bridegroom, etc. Turn away, be made like, you my beloved, to a gazelle or to a young hart among the mountains of the hollows. Gregory. Turn away the rush of evils; see as a gazelle does, you who look upon the thoughts of human beings; destroy the offspring of evil as a young hart, consuming the race of the serpent; for you see the hollows of human life; for everything that is exalted against the truth is a abyss and not a mountain, a hollow and not a height; if, then, you run upon these things, he says, every

The valley will be filled, and every such mountain will be brought low. {Of the Nile.} How is it that she who has just said, "My beloved is like a gazelle," and what follows, now says again, "Turn away," not to the mountains of Bethel, but to the mountains of the valleys? By saying the one as already accomplished, and by taking up the other as a command, she urges him on; but perhaps the difference in the naming of the mountains on which he comes resolves the difficulty. For there she said "to the mountains of Bethel," but here "to the mountains of the valleys." Perhaps, then, the one signifies the earthly region, and the other Hades, from its hollow depth; so that what is said is something like this: Already by nature you have been made like the gazelle and the fawn of deer upon the mountains of Bethel, having benefited those here and subjected the opposing powers; but it remains that those held in the region beneath the earth, because of the death that reigned over all, should also enjoy your beneficence, and further that you should destroy the powers ruling there, drawing them in by scent like a deer. {Of Origen.} The Bride said the former things to the maidens, etc. {Of Philo.} Or, "Turn away" from the Jews to the Gentiles. And he called the righteous "mountains" because of their loftiness, and "of the valleys" because of their humility. {Of Cyril.} She asks the Bridegroom to leave the barren synagogue and come to those of the hollow and long-humbled soul that formerly worshipped idols, who have ascended to heavenly height. CHAPTER 3:1–4. By night I sought on my bed him whom my soul loved; I sought him, and did not find him; I called him, and he did not answer me.

I will arise now and go about the city, in the markets and in the streets, and I will seek him whom my soul loved. I sought him, and did not find him. I called him, and he did not answer me. The watchmen who go about the city found me: Have you seen him whom my soul loved? It was but a little while when I passed by them, until I found him whom my soul loved. I held him, and did not let him go, until I brought him into my mother's house and into the chamber of her who conceived me. {Of Gregory.} The Bride's narrative is one of philosophy, through the things she recounts about herself, teaching as doctrine how the lovers of the surpassing beauty ought to be disposed toward the Divine. For in the highest division, the nature of beings is cut in two: one part is perceptible and material, the other intelligible and immaterial. And again, since the intelligible nature is divided in two, one part is uncreated and productive, always remaining in the same state; the other is created, and is preserved in the good at all times by participation in what surpasses it, and grows toward it and is changed toward the greater, always stretching out toward the better and never ceasing from its longing. Since, then, the Bride also, having been exalted by so many ascents and journeying from strength to strength, seemed to have obtained the hope of the highest of goods, but saw herself lacking in the good, she rightly laments; and as one who has not yet obtained the goal of her eagerness, she is at a loss and is distressed, and she makes public such perplexity in her narrative; and she describes in her account how she found the one she sought.

The more perfect participation in the good, then, she calls a bed, and she calls the time of the bed night; and through the name of night, the vision of things invisible is indicated, according to Moses in the darkness, in which was God who "made darkness his hiding place," according to the Prophet, "round about him." Having come to rest in this, she is then taught that she is as far from attaining perfection as those who have not even made a beginning; for she now speaks as one deemed worthy of the perfect, resting herself as on a kind of bed of the comprehension of things known, when I came within things invisible, having left behind the senses; when I was encompassed by the divine night, seeking him who is hidden in the darkness, then indeed I had the love for the beloved; but the beloved himself eluded the grasp of my thoughts. For I sought him upon my bed, so as to know what the essence is in the nights, whence it comes, to what it ends, in what it has its being, but I did not find him. Then she says, I called him, naming the unnameable as far as I could, and he did not answer me; for there was no utterance of a name that reached the one sought. Then, therefore, I knew that of the majesty of the glory of his holiness there is no limit. Hence she rouses herself and traverses in thought the supercosmic nature, which she called a city, in which are principalities and dominions and the thrones appointed to the authorities, and the assembly of the heavenly ones; which is signified by the name of the broad street. But not finding in them the beloved, she reasoned within herself: perhaps the one loved by me is not even comprehensible to them.

But through silence she indicated the incomprehensible, and dismissing every found thing, she scarcely came to know the sought thing, so that in its not being found what it is, it is known that it is. Therefore she says, "When I had passed a little from all creation," dismissing every apprehensive approach, by faith I found the beloved; through which I will also hold him, until he comes within my treasury, that is, my heart; or then she becomes receptive of his divine indwelling, when she comes to that state in which she was at the beginning when I was formed by the mother who conceived me; which is the first cause of our constitution. {Of Nilus.} The Bride recounts the states of herself in which she was, seeking the Word and perfection and what follows in perfection; and she says these things for the benefit of the rest; they teach that it is not possible to find the desired object while seeking with rest; for ease is hostile to the exercise of good things; for the phrase, "In the nights I sought on my bed him whom my soul loved," is of this sort, as if the Bride were recounting to the young women that she thought it was light and easy to acquire virtue and to make wisdom her own; and I was seeking not with toil, but relaxed and at ease, and resting on bodily things as on a bed; but since this seeking of comprehension failed, I turned to working virtue; therefore I said, "I will arise now," and the rest, leaving the bed, in order to make the search through works; but not even this led me to the finding.

For it was necessary, while she was working the works of virtue, to hide the labor, but by making a display of it she published it in the broad streets and markets, hunting after the praise of men. Therefore not even so was I able to find her; for labor contributes nothing to the possession of good things when it is done with love of glory. But when the guards found her, those who keep watch in the city—and these are ministering spirits that serve the salvation of men, or that preside over the governance of life—and when they were asked about the beloved, they passed by her in silence as unworthy of an answer. From their turning away she gathered that such a manner of life was not pleasing to them, and she reckoned that she ought not to toil to no purpose, nor, enduring the harshness of virtue, to fall behind in progress because of the praise of those who see; and so she found the thing sought, working the good of the beautiful itself for no other reason, and justly pursuing the just. Hence she says that she found him not after much time but immediately. For a little after I had passed by them, I found him whom my soul loved; for to one who has passed by the aforementioned conditions and has reached perfection, God is found without delay, with the apprehension of the thing sought cooperating as light. For what light is to the eyes, truth is to the mind. And a great commendation of the Bride is spoken in what follows: I seized him, and so on; for to acquire the beautiful by labor is perhaps the lot of many, but to keep it with perseverance is the lot of few. For the many, when they have reached the object of their zeal, either having obtained a means of it in time, or having turned their eagerness aside to other things, fall away.

And if they grow careless for a little while, they fall from the best condition, rendering much labor useless; but she, having found the good through toil, did not turn back, but kept her zeal equal, until she genuinely made the beloved object her own; having settled virtue even into the innermost storerooms, she brought it into the storeroom of the house. {Of Origen.} Having spoken concerning the mysteries before

the marriage, etc. {Of Cyril.} He signifies the women who came at deep dawn on the first day of the week to the tomb of Jesus, and did not find him; therefore he speaks of "upon the couch," or "from the couch," or he calls the tomb of the Lord her couch, inasmuch as we are buried together with him; but she did not find him when she heard, "He is not here; for he has risen"; and the angels who were keeping watch found her, whom she also asks, "Where have you laid the Lord?" But when she had passed by those she questioned, he met her saying, "Rejoice"; therefore she says, "When I had passed by them a little, until I found him"; and "I will not let him go"; for she grasped his feet, and heard, "Do not touch me." And "the house of my mother" he calls the assembly of the apostles, to which she went and announced the resurrection of Christ. 5. I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the powers and by the strengths of the field, if you stir up and awaken love, until it please. {Of Gregory.} Again, out of love for one another, he converses with the souls that are being discipled; which in the preceding passages, by comparison with the beauty of the Bride that was likened to the lily, the word called thorns; and through the oath of the powers in the world he rouses them to an equal measure of love; so that the will of the Bridegroom may become effective even upon him;

The rest has been shown in the preceding discourse. {Of Nilus.} This is the second time the Bride adjures the daughters of Jerusalem to awaken love, which is entirely asleep; and the meaning has been shown. 7. Who is this that comes up from the wilderness like stalks of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense from all the powders of the perfumer? {Of Gregory.} In the advances made in virtue, those who are transformed from glory to glory through desire for the higher things do not always remain in the same character; but in proportion to the word of what has always been rightly achieved by each one through the perfection of good things, a peculiar character shines forth upon his life, becoming and appearing one thing after another through the increase of good things. Therefore the friends of the Bridegroom seem to me to be struck with wonder at what appears; those who formerly knew her to be fair, but fair as among women, and afterward, by comparison with gold with studs of silver, extolled her beauty; but now, seeing no trace of the former marks about her, but characterizing her by the higher things, they marvel, not only at her ascent, but also from where she sprang up; for this is what also intensifies their amazement; which is the greatest encomium for the Bride, testifying to her change and transition to the better. For she was seen by us, he says, as black before—this one who comes up from the wilderness; and how did she strip off the dark form? How does a snowy beauty flash forth upon her? Or is the wilderness, as it seems, also the cause of these things, having made her spring up like a shoot to a height and changing her to such beauty?

For she acquired it from her own labors through self-control and diligence; for this is what it means that she comes up from the wilderness. Thus at one time the soul of the prophet also became thirsty for the divine fountain, since for him the flesh, having become impassable and desert and waterless, received the divine thirst for itself. Therefore they interpret her beauty through many examples, since it was not possible for everything to be comprehended through one. For first they liken her bloom to stalks, and not even this to one alone, but through the multitude they depict the many-formed and varied nature of the virtues. Then smoke from incense is taken up as an image of beauty, and not even this is simple, but mixed with myrrh and frankincense, so that the grace of the vapors becomes one. Therefore the one who is about to dedicate himself to the service of God will be no other frankincense burned to God—for this is consecrated to the honor of God—unless he first put to death the members that are upon the earth; for myrrh is suited to the burial of bodies. When these things have come to pass, every kind of aromatic spice according to virtue, in the circuit of life, having been refined as if in some sacrifice into that sweet dust, which, taking up in his breath, he becomes fragrant, having become full of the perfumed spirit.

{Origen.} Very beautiful is she who goes up, etc. {Nil.} The Bride caused amazement to those who saw her: because she was going up from the wilderness, and as stems of smoke having been perfumed, and because she was not perfumed from elsewhere, but from myrrh and frankincense, and from the dust of the perfumer. All these things signify the withdrawal from earthly things; for the soul that has kept away from evil, and leads a life of inactivity from base deeds, and has renounced the sower of the tares, is in the wilderness, advancing in good works; and she begins to go up from the wilderness as stems of smoke having been perfumed. For just as smoke, having begun from the earth, rises in stems toward the air, yet receives its root, as it were, from the flame that is compressed in the wood; but when the material fails from below, having been separated from the earth, it departs entirely, mingling with its own part and being resolved into itself. So the soul that withdraws from earthly things, even if it advances toward heavenly things, does not depart perfectly to them before the earthly things fail completely. And the fact that myrrh and frankincense are the fragrance mingled with the stem of the smoke signifies the mortification of the body and the subjection that comes from self-control; with these, as she advances, she perfumed those who were present. And the dust of the spices is in harmony with the meaning of the proclamation; for this too, from the rubbing of the thick earth, rises fine upon its surface; and being stirred by the feet of travelers, it is lifted up on high, journeying toward the height. But if she happens to be a heretical soul, or one doing the good for some reason and for its own sake, she is dust of the earth, lifted up a little.

And again, being easily carried down to its own proper place through its attachment to things below; but if with the Church's faith it has its plant above, in the aim of pleasing the Divine, it is the dust of the perfumer, having the fragrance of the doctrines mingled with its high manner of life. And it can also be said doctrinally concerning the Church: for from the wilderness that has no man, she has gone up, breathing myrrh and frankincense because she has been buried together with Christ; and because, by using worldly things as is fitting, she has made the dust of worldly affairs into the dust of the perfumer; and because of the reasonable use, she has changed the dusty into the fragrance of Christ. For he who makes the things that do not stand but are carried about by the winds of the worldly breeze to be precious through almsgiving, has made the dust of the earth into the dust of the perfumer; by the reasonable use of those in need, he has changed their dusty and scattered state into an aromatic fragrance and one truly dear to God. {Cyril.} Myrrh, when she has been buried together with Christ through frankincense; and frankincense, when she has risen with him and partaken of his divinity. And not by these alone has the Church's soul been perfumed, but also by the varied contemplations of knowledge. For he who divides most exactly and searches out things finely down to the least detail might be said to be in some way a perfumer, refining and reducing to dust all the fragrant oracles; with which the Bride is now said to have been perfumed. And perhaps also he who lives not according to the flesh but according to the spirit, his heart in no way grown fat, preserving the varied and manifold nature of the fragrance, makes from all the things now so called a fragrance, the dust of the perfumer.

But someone might also say that the holy and ecclesiastical soul, once the child of the desert of God, ascends from the desert, from the gathering of the nations, leaving behind doctrines and words and deeds that are deserts of God, and ascending to the things of God. 7, 8. Behold the bed of Solomon; sixty mighty men around it from the mighty men of Israel, all holding the sword, taught for war; each man has his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the nights. {Of Philo.} He calls the bed the tomb of Christ. The sixty mighty men are the fullness of perfection, those who guard the tomb; who also, when the earthquake occurred, were struck with amazement on the night on which Christ rose. And the men of Christ have two swords: the one that restrains the seminal emissions, which is upon the thighs, through the self-control of chastity; and the other that cuts through false doctrines; and the sword is for not being amazed at the darkness. {Of Gregory.} After the testimony to her beauty, the friends of the Bridegroom, and the preparers of the holy bridal chamber, and the groomsmen of the pure Bride, show her the beauty of the royal bed, so that they might lead the Bride more into desire for the divine and undefiled life together with him. That the account concerning the bed is not from history is clear from what was recorded bodily concerning Solomon, whose palace and table and the rest the account accurately described; for it said nothing new or unusual concerning the bed.

So it is necessary not to remain with the letter, but through careful understanding to change the word into spiritual contemplation, removing the mind from the material emphasis. The divine beauty seems to have, within what is fearful, that which is lovely, being shown by opposites to bodily beauty. For since the passionate desire for bodies, seated in the members of the flesh, lies in ambush for the mind like some band of robbers and leads it captive, having snatched it away to its own will, for this reason it follows that the divine love comes about from the opposites of the bodily disposition; so that if from this [bodily desire] come dissolution and slackness and a sluggish disposition, there the ground of divine love becomes fear and unastonished courage. For when the manly spirit has struck down and put to flight the principle of pleasure, then the pure beauty of the soul appears, defiled by no passion of bodily desire. Therefore necessarily the bridal bed of the king is encompassed round about by armed men; whose experience in war, and their readiness to have the sword upon the thigh, produces amazement and astonishment in the dark thoughts, in those who in the nights and in deep darkness have obtained the straight heart and shoot their arrows. For that the armament of those stationed around the bed is destructive of filthy pleasures and thoughts would be clear through the description of the word: For all are taught war, a man and his sword upon his thigh. For truly it belongs to those who know how one must wage war against the flesh and the blood.

by having the sword fitted at his thigh. So then, the one girded with the sword of chastity is the one beloved on the incorruptible bed, one of the mighty men of Israel, and worthy of the word of the sixty. And since every one who is saved becomes Israel—that is, a mind that sees God; for as many as see God from the working, are rightly called by this name. And it is proper to such a one to look toward sin with none of the senses. For this reason the whole of the saved is said to become one bed of the king; for since the tribes of Israel are twelve, one being taken from each part of the fullness of those on the left, and the whole being armed according to the number of the senses, this one being divided, the twelve tribes of Israel make sixty; these are one battle-line and one army; and there will be one bed, that is, one Church, and one people, and one Bride, all becoming, fitted together under one commander and churchman and Bridegroom into the fellowship of one body, thrusting forth the sword through the thighs—whether, then, for each sense thrusting forth the sword suited to itself for the striking down of opposing thoughts. So many, then, are those who have put on the divine panoply in their senses, encircling the king's own heart, clearly, in which the Bridegroom rests; for through the bed he indicates the rest, which the armed men guard in impassibility and purity, so as to astound the demons who assail in darkness and nights. And the bed, in another sense, is the knowledge of God, through which he rests upon those who draw near to him.

Nilou. He has called the Lord's body a bed; and the sixty mighty men, whether one calls them the holy powers encircling the Lord's man, according to "They drew near and ministered to him," and "He will command his angels concerning you," or the souls of the saints who, because they have been taught the war against the enemy, are thus named—you will not miss what is fitting. These hold a sword upon their thigh; for those who have adorned the practical faculty with reason and put to death the passionate faculty with reason rightly encircle the king. And they are addressed by the number sixty, having become perfect in all things and standing firmly and steadfastly; for sixty is a cube and a square number, equal on all sides in all its own parts, and immovable, being composed of four fifteens, and six tens, and five twos, and three twenties, and having in these the said firmness. For this reason, being such, they were chosen from the mighty men of Israel as mightier than the mighty; and perhaps also those who now champion the Church and fight in word and deed on behalf of the body of Christ are around the bed of Solomon: by resisting the heretics in word, holding a sword in the hand; and by living temperately and continently, carrying the sword upon the thigh because of the terrors of the night. For a man, it says, has his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the nights.

For they were not only striking down open enemies with the refutations of truth, but also, fearing secret assaults, because of those who shoot in the darkness, they remained under arms even at night, watching out for the ambushes of plotters. 9, 10. King Solomon made himself a litter from the woods of Lebanon; he made its pillars of silver, and its reclining-place of gold; its covering was purple, its interior was paved with stone; a love-offering from the daughters of Jerusalem. {Of Theophilus.} The wood of Lebanon is Ruth the Moabitess, from whom came Jesse; the litter, then, is the Lord's body. {Of Gregory.} That Solomon is in many places taken as a type of the true King is clear, and the mystery concerning the Lord is depicted in that figure; through the construction of the litter, then, the Lord's dispensation concerning us is signified. For God comes in many ways among those worthy of him, becoming in each one as each has capacity and worth—like a well-yoked horse receiving the good rider upon itself; so then he who bears God upon himself would reasonably be called a litter of the peaceful King. And again, Lebanon in Scripture often indicates the opposing power, as in, The Lord will crush the cedars of Lebanon, and will make them thin, and so on. The word shows that not only the evils that have sprung from the opposing power, but also the mountain itself, the first root of evil, which nurtures the timber of such cedars, will be brought to nothing.

Therefore we too were once wood of Lebanon, as long as we were rooted in it, both through our wicked life and through the deceit of idols; but when we were cut from there by the rational axe, and came into the hands of the craftsman, he made us his own litter, transforming the nature of the wood through regeneration into silver and gold, and into blooming purple, and into the distributions of the gifts. For to one is given, according to the Apostle, the word of wisdom, to another gifts of prophecy, to another some other of the workings, according as each is naturally disposed and able to receive the grace; or having become an eye of the body of the Church, or being appointed for hands, or serving in place of a foot. So also in the construction of the litter, one becomes a pillar, another a step, another the part at the head, which he calls the couch. Therefore the pillars of the litter are silver; and their bases, purple; and the couch is of gold, on which the Bridegroom lays his head; and with precious stones the whole interior is adorned. Therefore by pillars we must understand the pillars of the Church, for whom the word of the kingdom is precisely pure and fiery silver, having stepped up in the height of their conduct. For the distinctive mark of the kingdom is

It is considered purple; but their ruling faculty, in which he who prepared the litter bows his head, is the gold of pure doctrines; and whatever things are invisible and hidden are adorned in the pure conscience with precious stones; through all of which, love from the daughters of Jerusalem is established. But if someone wishes to call the whole Church the litter, and to distribute the differences of the activities to certain persons as the members of the litter, the account thus also has great facility, to fit the parts of the litter to each order of those appointed in the Church; for "God has set in the Church, first apostles, second prophets," and the rest; so that through these names, of those contributing to the construction of the litter, priests are understood, and teachers, and venerable virginity, which within the litter shines forth in the purity of its rays, as it were with the rays of stones; and through the purity of life the daughters of the Jerusalem above are shown, in whom the love of God becomes effective. {Of Nilus.} The litter is a vessel resembling a throne, receiving the one who sits; this perhaps is Paul, the "vessel of election." For wisdom also calls him a throne, saying elsewhere: "I was present when he set apart his throne upon the winds"; and he was set apart upon the winds, because of the multitude of temptations and circumstances; or also because he ran around the inhabited world with swift feet in the zeal of preaching. This man, then, is the litter, having his mind as a golden couch, on which the Bridegroom rests; and his word as pillars of silver.

For the ecclesiastical proclamation is established by the apostolic word. The words, then, are pillars, because of their firmness and immovability; and silver, because of the Apostle's proven and blameless character; and their mounting is purple; for those who travel by his words arrive at the kingdom of the heavens, mounting by their dignity as by purple, and saying with Paul, "But our citizenship is in heaven." And the pavement within it is the precious and beautiful disposition of the virtues in secret; when Christ is the foundation, he builds them upon him as precious stones; but when it is the base for the floor of the litter, it mosaics the mounting, varied and most blooming for the royal feet, and for those who live as citizens according to the apostolic tradition, making their progress easy and smooth; or perhaps it signifies the unostentatious and untragic; for he wishes the conduct of the virtuous to be hidden; whence also by saying "within," he indicated the non-public nature of virtue. And he says that love is built together with the construction of the litter; for without this there is no benefit from the remaining virtues. And the litter is of the woods of Lebanon, that is, of his kinsmen according to the flesh, the Israelites; for Lebanon signifies these. The litter of Solomon is the saints in whom Christ rests; and the woods of Lebanon are figuratively those from Israel. But when, "The Lord crushes all the cedars of Lebanon and makes them thin as the calf, Lebanon," he speaks of those who did not keep the piety in which they were planted; concerning whom also Isaiah...

And Lebanon with its heights shall fall.” When Solomon says to Hiram because of the construction of the temple, “And now command, and let them cut for me cedars of Lebanon,” the word concerns those things that are referred to the spiritual building of living stones—wood corresponding to the living stones; and as adorned with reason they are called silver. They are also a couch for the Word who rests and has somewhere to lay his head; and the gold is the mind. And whenever Paul, perhaps, is not overcome by the labors in his afflictions, he procures for himself, as it were, by a kind of dye, swimming in it—a purple robe fitting for the kingly Word within him, who delights in the endurance of the apostles amid afflictions. And the mosaic pavement in the things of the litter has been spread out, from the precious stones which each one gathers for himself, building upon them gold, silver, and precious stones.

{Of Cyril.} Let the spiritual union be understood as gold, the precious and divine union; for the ark in the wilderness, within and without, was overlaid with gold, for the manifestation of the divine union; and purple is put upon it because of the multitude of those called into the kingdom. And whenever someone believes, he receives Christ in his heart, who is the precious pearl; but he also says that the litter was made from the daughters of Jerusalem for the sake of love alone; for so God loved the world that he sent his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 11.

Go forth and see, daughters of Zion, in King Solomon, in the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, and on the day of the gladness of his heart. {Of Cyril.} The Church from the nations, he says, is the “Go forth and see”; and the day of wedding he calls the day of his passion, on which he wed the Church through his blood. {Of Philo.} Go forth, he says, from the wickedness of the law; see Christ and the crown of thorns which the Synagogue placed on him, from which Christ is according to the flesh. One day of joy is the Passover, on which he said, “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you.” {Of Gregory.} This word contains an exhortation to the daughters of Jerusalem from the Bride to go forth from fleshly things, which might also be understood as the souls of those being saved. How long, he says, are you shut up in the cave of this life? Go forth from the coverings of nature, and see the wondrous sight, becoming daughters of Zion, so that from a high watchtower (for thus Zion is interpreted) you may be able to behold the Bridegroom wearing his crown. And the Church becomes his crown, encircling his head with living stones; and the weaver of such a crown is love—whether one calls it love or mother, he will not err; “for God is love,” according to John’s voice; and it makes no difference when said of God; for the Divine is neither male nor female.

For how could this be, when it does not even remain with us human beings continually, but when we all become one in Christ, we put off the marks of this distinction together with the whole old man? And in the Gospel the Father is said to make the wedding for the Son; and the Prophet says, "For you placed a crown upon his head"; but here he says that the crown was placed upon the Bridegroom by his mother. Since, then, the wedding is one and the bride is one, and the crown is placed upon the Bridegroom by one, it makes no difference whether one says that the only-begotten Son of God is God, or the Son of his love, since the power that arrays him as bride is one under either name, for our dwelling together. And the Bride says that he rejoices in this crown, exulting in the bridal adornment; for having truly made the Church his companion by grace, he rejoices, being crowned with the virtues of those who are distinguished in her. {Of Nilus.} Who it is that says these things is unclear; but it is likely the friends of the Bridegroom; but whoever he is, he calls those from the nations; for Zion is their mother, she who put forth the law of Christ. For the former law was from Sinai, but the second from Zion. Since, then, the nations sat in darkness and the shadow of death, the prophet who said these things perhaps summons them, saying, "The people who sat in darkness," come out and see; and what does he add, marveling at the boldness? In the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding.

The day of Christ's marriage and the day of the joy of his heart was the day of the cross, on which he took the Church from the Gentiles as a Bride, betrothed to him through the prophets. Seeing therefore the Synagogue, often benefited, the prophet, as she returned not just recompense to Christ but placed a crown of thorns upon his head, being astonished at such a transgression of the law, says: "Go forth and behold King Solomon, in the crown with which his mother crowned him."

And he calls her the mother of Christ, since he is descended from her both in genealogy and in the economy according to the flesh. CHAPTER 4, 1. Behold, you are fair, my neighbor, behold you are fair; your eyes are doves, besides your silence. {Of Gregory.} Through the exhortation of the things previously spoken, the Word, having accepted the Bride's love for humanity—that in imitation of the Master she too wishes all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth—adorns her wholly and marvels at her beauty, dwelling with pleasure in the Word upon each individual member, granting to each member its own praise through comparison and likeness. Fair, then, says the Word to her, having drawn near to the good by her good purpose; and he calls her neighbor, because she imitated his love for humanity and exhorted the other souls to leave behind things temporal and, having gone forth, to see the Bridegroom wearing the crown. And through the repetition of the praise he demonstrates the unerring character of the testimony; for in double testimony the divine word declares that the truth is confirmed.

Since the Church is one body, and in the one body there are many members, not all having the same function, for this reason the exact examiner of beauty, from the whole body of the members that pleased him, makes the praise of each one particular and appropriate; and he begins with the eyes. These would be, for instance, Samuel—for he was called "the seeing one"—and Ezekiel, who was appointed by God to watch over the salvation of those guarded by him; and Micah "the seer," and Moses "who beholds," and for this reason was named God. All those appointed to guide the people were eyes, and they were called "seeing." And now too the leaders of the Church, who hold the same rank as those men and guide the rest of the body toward the light of truth. And doves, he says, whether meaning spiritual, and looking to nothing material; or else through these he hinted at purity. The pair of eyes is praised, so that the praise may be spoken of the man who is both apparent and understood; for this reason he says, "apart from your silence"; for of the good life, one part is evident to men, the other to God alone. Therefore he who sees hidden things testifies that what is kept silent is greater than what is seen. {Of Nilus.} He added "apart from your silence"; for if you contemplate spiritual things, you would be beautiful rather even in speaking them; but being silent you are beautiful by half, keeping quiet about what is for the benefit of the many, even if you do this in moderation; for to conceal is a good work of virtue, when the intention inclines toward love of glory.

But one must not keep silent about the word that is able to build up the hearers, even if the speaker's aim looks toward praise in an improper way. {Of Cyril.} Her silence signifies obedience in all things, according to "Be silent and hear, O Israel." Your hair is like flocks of goats that have come up from Gilead. {Of Gregory.} Through these words the discourse brings the virtuous conduct of life into praise; for by the insensitive hairs is meant insensitivity to worldly works—of those who have made the pursuit of the spiritual work of life their own. For "hair" is what is given to women instead of a covering, according to the Apostle; modesty and chastity are understood together with death to the world; for a hair is without sensation. And by the abundance of hair, they are compared to flocks of goats that were revealed from Gilead. Thus one must infer that, just as the king, transforming the cedars of Lebanon into gold and purple, prepared a litter for himself, so the good Shepherd knows how, taking flocks of goats, to transform the herds of the mountain of Gilead into flocks; and this is the name of a foreign mountain, of that which reveals such grace, so that those from the Gentiles who followed the good Shepherd may contribute to the hair of the Bride's beauty; through which chastity and modesty and self-control and the mortification of the body are signified. Or perhaps Elijah also contributes something to the contemplation of the goats, who philosophized on the mountain of Gilead

for a long time, he who most of all led the life according to self-control: squalid in appearance, shaggy in hair, covered with a goat's skin. All those, then, who in that time prosper their own life become the adornment of the Church, in flocks according to the prevailing form of philosophy now, laboring at virtue together with one another. But that such flocks were revealed from Gilead has an excess greater than the wonder: that from the Gentile life has come to us the transition to the philosophy according to God. For it was not Mount Zion, his holy place, that led such a way of life, but the nation devoted to idols came to so great a change of life as to adorn the head of the Bride with the achievements according to virtue. {Of Nilus.} As regards the literal sense, the comparison has nothing in common; for what is similar between hair and flocks of goats? But as regards the father's meaning, there is great harmony; for whether it is a perfect soul to which these things have been said, or the glorious Church, the contemplation of the expression has a certain coherence; for even the perfect soul's so-called cast-offs and superfluities, which are certain necessary matters accomplished through the body, since they come about as is fitting and with proper adornment, are likened to a flock of goats arranged and well fenced in and having nothing cut off, because it cleaves to the right reason of nature and is duly governed by it. For when the effusion of prodigal luxury is confined to what is necessary and needful, what is called hair will be like a flock of goats.

The physical things, then, are indifferent among indifferent things, but among the more diligent they are earnest and useful. But if it is the Church to which these things are said, her hair is those who repent of their sins; therefore they are compared to a flock of goats, not of sheep. And they were revealed from Gilead, from the word that migrated from the Jews to the Gentiles; for Gilead is interpreted as "migration of testimony." For when he said to the Jewish nation, "You are my people and the sheep of my inheritance," the testimony was theirs; but when he chose the Gentiles as a people for himself, the testimony came to be with them, having migrated from those to these. 2. Your teeth are like flocks of shorn sheep that have come up from the bath; all of them bear twins, and there is not a barren one among them. {Of Gregory.} First he speaks concerning the teeth, having passed over the praises of the mouth and the lips; and then thus concerning the lips. For first one feasts on the spiritual lessons, and as it were smooths them down like food with the physical teeth, and then speaks concerning them—those things which a psychic power makes fine and suitable, preparing them to be passed on to the so-called inward parts. The discerning and dividing teachers of the doctrines, then, who make the divine mysteries fine through clearer exposition, so that this spiritual food becomes easily acceptable to the body of the Church—the Word called these "teeth," and he wishes them to be stripped of every material burden; for this is what "shorn" means; and to be pure from every defilement of the flesh by the bath of conscience.

And besides these, always ascending through progress, and never dragged down in the opposite direction into the abyss; and to bring forth twins, by the soul indeed impassibility, but by the bodily life decorum, and in general to be weak in none of the noble pursuits. {Of Nilus.} Similarly also this, according to the letter, is unintelligible; but according to the meaning it is written concerning blameworthy teeth: "You have broken the teeth of sinners," and, "There will be the gnashing of teeth"; but concerning praiseworthy ones, "His teeth are milk"; and the present passage. And perhaps they might be powers of the soul, through which it is nourished by the word, entrusted with the discernment of the word and making it fine, and as it were chewing the cud, the word that was received through hearing in a somewhat coarser form until then; but these teeth are broken when they eat the unripe grapes of heretical teaching; for having become sour, they become useless for grinding the true food. He likens the teeth of the Bride, then, to a flock of shorn sheep, because they have nothing of the kind that the aforementioned teeth of the impious had; but also because all filth is removed through the bath, and excess through the shearing. And these teeth bring forth twins when they consider things useful both for the present life and for the life to come, by their twin-bearing toward the things understood, adding their own fruitfulness of works; for none among them is childless; instead of, not one is barren of good deeds and unfruitful. And those who labor in the Church in word and teaching, and who pass on nourishment to every body because of their concord and unity of soul, are likened to a flock.

But because of the lightness and freedom from care of their dispossession, having sheared off every material of wealth, they are called shorn; and from the ascent of the bath, they are twin-bearing, having a womb not barren but fruitful of virtuous works, and having brought forth twins through the contemplations suited to each age, both the present and the future. And perhaps for this reason they are teeth, like a flock of the shorn, which bring forth twins; since they are no longer hairs, having sheared off the burden of sins. {Origen.} But they bring forth twins in another sense, because of the twofold nature of the understanding, both the literal and the spiritual. {Philo.} Or that they alone, having descended into the mystical water, ascended with the Holy Spirit. 3. Your lips are like a scarlet cord, and your speech is beautiful. {Gregory.} A scarlet cord is faith accomplished through love; he praises, then, the bond of the Church, and both the unanimity and the confession, through which it confesses the one crucified for it; according to which the Church, in agreement, becomes one lip, and one voice woven together from different threads of the intelligible wool, like a cord; and by saying scarlet, it teaches us to bear the confession through the mouth, of the one who redeemed us through his own blood; for by both is the comeliness of the Church's lips fulfilled, when faith shines forth before confession, and love is entwined with faith. By the cord, then, he indicated love; by the scarlet, faith; and thus the speech of the bride becomes beautiful, of the word of faith which we preach, as the divine Apostle says.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." {Of Nilus.} Scripture often calls the word lips, as in, "May the Lord destroy all deceitful lips." And, "Grace was poured out on your lips." Whether therefore it is the perfect soul, or the teachers in the Church, whenever they possess the word living and able to bind the hearer, so that the one who has once heard can no longer withdraw, their lips have a scarlet cord: a cord because it binds, and scarlet because of the life-giving and fiery nature of their power; for such is also living flesh, bearing its redness as a witness of life. Declaring this, the Lord said: "My words are spirit and life," signifying by the spirit the binding of the cord, and by the life the scarlet; and their speech is beautiful, possessing much that is pleasant along with what is beneficial. {Of Origen.} That is, let the preparation of the word be fiery, etc. As the husk of a pomegranate is your apple outside your silence. {Of Gregory.} The Bridegroom takes pleasure in the beauty of the mouth, in the blush of virginity, which custom calls an apple; and he likens it to the husk of a pomegranate; for it blushes with modesty and chastity; for just as the fruit of the pomegranate is guarded by a rough and untrodden surface, so also the austere and continent and hardened life becomes a guardian of the beauties of chastity; and he praises both the outward and the inward purity.

For here too the praise is twofold: both through what is visible in a decorous life, and through what is accomplished in the impassibility of the soul—things seen by him alone who looks into hidden things. Therefore he says, "Apart from your silence."

{Of Nilus.} In the case of the soul, the austerity of life and its inaccessibility to the passions is the apple of the cheek, resembling the skin of a pomegranate because of its astringency; for it is especially by this part that the state of the soul is judged—by the sober person frowning, and by the unchaste eyes, through the un-smiling expression, signifying the tastelessness of the sight; while the dissolute person's is, as it were, smiling faintly and relaxed and inviting wanton eyes from afar, and announcing to them the passion of pleasure by its cheerfulness. In the case of the Church, it is the rank of those who practice virginity and the dignity of those who discipline themselves, showing the face of the Bride more dry and unapproachable to heretical lovers, and having nothing edible for their taste. For the skin of a pomegranate drives away those who are outside, having a quality repugnant to the taste, but safely hides the fruit within. And the fruit of the pomegranate is populous and like a festival of a multitude bound together in love, guarded not only by a strong fence—the outer husk—but also divided by thin membranes into various assemblies, and imitating the ranks of the Church's ordered succession: divided to such an extent that the adornment befitting the Church is not confounded, and the constitution proper to the people of God is preserved.

distributed by economy according to excellences and priestly ministries, and not separated by disposition, but bound together by love; and even within the silence, such is the cheek of the Bride, possessing much dignity together with a strict reserve. 1648 {Of Origen.} He adds to the praise of chastity, etc. 4. Your neck is as the tower of David, built in Thalpioth; a thousand shields hang upon it; all the darts of the mighty. {Of Gregory.} From these things we learn that the things done by the saints became a type and teaching of the things accomplished unto virtue; for example, marriages, through which they suggest to us in riddles the dwelling-together of the virtues; the colony, for it suggests the settlement of the virtuous life; the constructions of buildings, for it commands us to make the care that is built up through virtue; the war against the foreigners, teaching us to be courageous against injustice; so then also the conspicuous tower of David, in which he dedicated the first-fruits of the spoils, looks toward the progress of the Church; through this indicating that certain divine teachers are those among the people who hold the place of the neck, who would bear upon themselves the true head, Christ; having also the nourishing activity, I mean teaching; through which the strength is preserved for the body of the Church;

Being receptive of the Spirit, who makes the heart fiery and inflames it, and serving the Word through the well-sounding voice, and that the harmonious arrangement of the vertebrae be borne through the bond of peace, and being set upright again in minding the things above, and easily turned toward the things on either side; in which, showing that one avoids and guards against the varied methods of the devil, such a one was also the blessed Paul, who bore the name of Christ, having become a vessel of election, and proclaiming the Gospel with a well-sounding artery, and having Christ speaking and uttering in him; such a neck, then, has truly been built beside David; and understand by David the father of the king, in a certain conspicuous and high place; for this is Thalpioth; who from the beginning fashioned man to be a tower, and not a fall; and by his grace he built him again, securing him with many shields and with the missiles of the mighty, not lying on the ground but suspended in the air, which would be angelic guards, so that he is no longer plotted against by the assaults of enemies, but also instills fear in them, so that they do not even attempt to overrun him at all; and the thousand is taken as an indication of multitude; and you will understand as shoulders, to which this neck naturally belongs, the practical and active covenants, through which our arms obtain salvation

they accomplish. When, then, someone is a tower of the king, and happens to stand upon the lofty citizenship, then is fulfilled what is said by the Lord: "A city cannot be hidden, set upon a mountain." And understand for me the tower in place of the city. If indeed the neck of the Bride was called a necklace because of its curvature, now it is as a tower of David because of its uprightness and erectness; but the upright is contrary to the curved; yet the condition as a necklace is different from that as a tower, though not indeed contrary. For when the Word wishes to signify her condescension toward the weaker and her humility in the virtues, he names her neck a necklace, bent by a moderate disposition; but when he wishes to signify that which rises above and stands apart from the passions and the opposing powers, he names it a tower of David, inaccessible, clearly, to the enemies. A thousand shields hang upon it, and all the darts of the mighty, those of the powers that strive against her; which having subdued and made weaponless, she hung them upon her own neck, to be a sign of the multitude conquered by her, leaving no dart to the enemies with which they might again shoot against her; for she has not a number of darts, but all, having taken them, she keeps them with herself. Thus also her Bridegroom emptied the power of the enemy as he warred. And one may call the shields also the circumcisions of faith. And Thalpioth is interpreted as "in the battlements"; above the temptations, then, he says the tower is built. {Of Origen.} Aquila rendered Thalpioth as "battlements," etc. 5, 9.

Your two breasts are like two twin fawns of a gazelle, which feed among the lilies, until the day breathes and the shadows move. {Of Gregory.} Man is a twin being: the one outward and visible, and the one inward and hidden, dwelling together in this life at one and the same time; for neither does the soul exist before the body, nor is the body fashioned beforehand for the soul, but they come into being in life at the same time. Their food, by nature, is purity and the sweet fragrance over which the virtues preside. But sometimes poison is eagerly sought in place of nourishment by those who do not graze on the flowers of the virtues but take delight in thorns and thistles. Since, then, there is need of discerning eyes, able to distinguish with precision the lily and the thorn, and to choose the one that is saving and to reject the one that is destructive—for this reason the Word likened to the breasts, which by likeness to Paul become as milk for infants and feed with milk the newborn of the Church, and which, being joined to one another through the breasts, are named after the fawns of the gazelle—bearing witness in all things that the Church's care for such a one is approved, because in either respect it prospers toward the pasture of the pure lilies, keenly seeing and distinguishing the thorn from what is nourishing, and because it is occupied with the governing faculty, of which the heart is the symbol, which through itself nourishes the breasts; and further, because it does not confine the grace within itself but pours out the nipple of the word upon those who need it—until, he says, the shadows no longer prevail over the deceit that is eagerly pursued in this life.

But now that the light has shone forth everywhere, let all things be illumined, since the day, which breathes wherever it wills—that is, the light of the all-holy Spirit—has dawned. {Of Nilus.} Those who are infants in Christ and still fed on milk, he again calls breasts, likened to the fawns of gazelles; since those who are beginning in the fear of God, through the nobility of their faith, possessing the keen-sightedness of gazelles, are clear-sighted, seeing in hope the things to come as though present and laid up in promises. And the fawns feed among the lilies, nourished by the flower-strewn portion of the Church—of those who possess nothing and are free from care. For desiring to attain to a like zeal, they are nourished by the delight of the beloved, leaping as in a meadow through the conduct of those who profit them. And this they do until the things present, which are called a shadow, are moved—when the day that comes from the noetic Sun has breathed forth and begun to shine. And the fawns are rightly called twins, being of one womb and born at the same time from one travail; for the infants of the Church were brought forth by one travail through grace. {Of Origen.} The governing faculty, etc. {Of Cyril.} Or the two fawns are the ethical and the doctrinal teaching, the two breasts of the Bride; from which those who are nourished look with keenness toward God; and the nose, the fragrance of the apostolic and evangelical words, which we feed on until the consummation. I will go for myself to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of Lebanon. {Of Gregory.} Having praised the Bride in part, then, being about to make the praise of her whole body and to extol her wholly together, he has in between set forth the reason as follows, saying:

I will go forth to myself, and what follows. By myrrh, then, he signifies the passion; by frankincense, he has shown the glory of the Godhead. And by saying "to myself," he established that no one takes his soul from him, but he has authority to lay it down, and authority to take it again. By the mountain, he shows the greatness and height of the mystery. {Of Nilus.} Then he added: since the Bride—whether a soul or the Church—is so beautiful, he hastens thereafter to death, so that he may present her to himself without spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, and so that he may cleanse her by the washing of water in the word. And he will go not unwillingly but willingly; for he indicated death by "mountain," and after it the resurrection and ascension into heaven by "hill"—"mountain" for death, because it is fearful, but "hill" for the resurrection, because by the hope of the resurrection it lightens the dread of death. Having praised the members of the Bride in part, he now praises her wholly in what follows, calling her blameless and altogether beautiful. 7. You are altogether beautiful, my neighbor, and there is no blemish in you. {Of Gregory.} For human nature cannot otherwise be cleansed of blemish unless he who takes away the sin of the world destroys all wickedness through himself, abolishes through death the one who holds the power of death, and leads himself back again to his own glory of the Godhead, which he had from the beginning before the world existed. Therefore he says: I will endure death, that I may cleanse her. He, then, who has shared in myrrh—that is, in death—will certainly also share in the resurrection; for the one who suffers with him is also glorified with him.

But he who has once come to be in the divine glory becomes wholly beautiful, having come to be outside the blame that lies opposed to him. 8. Come from Lebanon, O Bride, come from Lebanon; you will come and pass through from the beginning of faith; from the head of Sanir and Hermon; from the dens of lions; from the mountains of leopards. {Of Cyril.} He teaches us whence the Bride comes, and that she comes from idolatry; for Lebanon is a mountain full of idols; whence, he says, You will come; and you will pass through by the law; for not knowing him, you were instructed in the mystery of Christ. {Of Gregory.} For having said, "You are beautiful, and there is no blame in you," lest, being puffed up by this testimony, she be hindered from the ascent to greater things, he again, through this exhorting voice, urges her to ascend to the things that lie above. Well, he says, have you followed in the things that have gone before; you came with me to the mountain of myrrh; for you were buried with me through baptism into death; you went up with me also to the hill of Lebanon; for you rose with me and were exalted in the communion of the Godhead; ascend also from these to other mountains, advancing and being exalted through active knowledge; for this Lebanon has become for you the beginning of faith even for the journey toward the heights, of which you partook through the resurrection, no longer a betrothed, but becoming a Bride; from this beginning, then, which is faith. You will come and pass through; that is, both now you will come, and passing through such ascents forever you will not cease. From the head of Sanir and Hermon. Through these he hints at the mystery of the birth from above.